The story of Emmett Till is a tragedy that has haunted several generations. His senseless murder at the hands of white men in Money, Mississippi caused a major shift in American politics which crescendoed in the Civil Rights Moment of the 1960’s. Apart from that, it’s also a violent lynching of a Black child by white adults, and the frankness of that fact can be muddled by the larger historical narrative. Till – the latest film from Chinonye Chukwu – tries to remind us of the basic human level of the trauma. In the twenty-first century, a cynicism about studio films documenting American Black suffering has grown, especially when it’s a film produced with awards season campaigning. Being reticent to watch Till is understandable. The film has no chance at being anything other than tragic, but Chukwu proves a careful, compassionate storyteller, and Till is a tremendous portrayal of strength and resilience.

In her previous film, 2019’s Clemency, Chukwu proved she could handle charged material with sensitivity and grace. That film was about a prison warden whose life amongst the drama of several executions, and it starred Alfre Woodard giving one of the greatest performances of her career. There’s a tremendous performance at the center of Till as well. Danielle Deadwyler, known mostly for her work in the miniseries Station Eleven and the Netflix film The Harder They Fall, plays Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett. Till is told mostly from Mamie’s point-of-view, which allows the film to avoid the gruesome details of Emmett’s murder, and focus on the Herculean effort Mamie must make to overcome it, fully measuring the gravity of the historical moment without dwelling on the specifics of the violence.

Chukwu is aware of the dread that the audience will feel as they watch this movie. The first half hour is a prologue that leads to the lynching. Emmett (Jalyn Hall) is a charming boy living in Chicago living with his mother Mamie. His family calls him “Bo”, a nickname given to him before he was even born. His father was an Air Force man killed in Europe during World War II. Mamie is with Gene Mobley (Sean Patrick Thomas), a man she isn’t married to yet but plans to be soon. She’s a secretary for the Air Force (the only person of color in the office), a job that allows her and Emmett to enjoy a steady middle class home. Curious to see the roots of his family’s past, Emmett is taking a weeks-long trip to Mississippi to visit his cousins. It’s the first time he’s been away from his mother for so long and the first time he’s visiting the South. There’s plenty of racism in Chicago, but Mamie stresses to her son: it’s different in Mississippi. “Make yourself small” Mamie explains, a piece of advice Emmett accepts with his usual playfulness. Raised with love, he can barely contemplate the severity of hate.

What follows is horrific and well-known. Chukwu mercifully decides against showing us what happens, but she does use our own knowledge of events to heighten the anxiety of Till’s fate. By the time the moment arrives, we’ve been made to properly understand Emmett more as a human being than a historical figure, re-contextualizing the tragedy in an intimate way that makes it further devastating without ever feeling exploitive. It’s obvious that Chukwu takes her responsibility here seriously, wanting to avoid the history of prestige dramas that mine Black pain for cinematic clout. She’s a sincere storyteller (she’s credited as a screenwriter, alongside Michael Reilly and Keith Beauchamp), and skilled enough to illustrate the immense sorrow associated with Till’s death without imbuing it with any dread or bleakness.

The majority of the movie deals with the aftermath and Mamie’s immediate decision to hold Emmett’s funeral with an open casket, exposing the grotesque evil of his murderers to the world. The murder trial, held in Mississippi, becomes a national news story, Emmett’s death shocking a nation and widening an already sizable divide between American regions and enflaming sensitive racial tensions. Mamie is approached by many figures who see this as an opportunity to further the cause of negroes, a suggestion that Mamie finds offensive. She does not want to be a political figurehead, she just wants justice for her son. As the trial approaches, Mamie tries to reconcile the macro implications, considering the role she’ll play in allowing her son to be a symbol to further a good cause. Till details how hard a decision this is, and deftly portrays Mamie’s growth in understanding her place in the culture at large.

There are tremendous performances throughout Till. Whoopi Goldberg and Frankie Faison play Mamie’s separated parents, each doing their best to do the impossible: to help Mamie recover from Emmett’s death. John Douglas Thompson plays Moses Wright or “Preacher”, the cousin in charge of taking care of Emmett in Mississippi. Shrouded in shame and guilt after the murder, Preacher’s fate is a secondary tragedy to Emmett, and Thompson gets this across with stunning grace and emotion. It is Deadwyler, though, who is Till‘s main showcase, a standout part with a performance that earns it. The details of grief, so cursory and hard to define, are burned so clearly across her every expression. Her monologues, infused with statements of courage and stridence, are vehement without being verbose. In a courtroom scene late in the film, Chukwu keeps the camera close on her face, a moment as stirring and exhilarating as anything else you’ll see in a movie this year.

There are several lesser-known details about Till that Chukwu illuminates in her film. The fact that some of Emmett’s attackers were mercenary Black men is a sobering reality not often mentioned, which only heightens the monstrousness of the white men who hired them out. The trial’s defense team calling Emmett’s very murder into question – a devilish suggestion that leads some to say the entire event was staged by the NAACP to shame whites – is a conspiratorial detail that will chill audience members all too familiar with the outrageous theories that foul many events to this very day. Till is a very effective film because Chukwu’s ample directorial skill never gets in the way of the characters she’s portraying. It’s a drama not only about turning pain into strength, but about the absolute power it takes to submit yourself to the pages of history.

 

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu