Director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till shares its name with two important historical figures. The first is Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who, in 1955, was the victim of a racist attack and fatal lynching. The second is Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who fought to make sure the world knew what happened to her son in the hopes that it would never happen again.
As Till opens, a nervous Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) prepares to send Emmett (Jalyn Hall) from their home in Chicago to Mississippi to visit family. Emmett is bursting with excitement, but Mamie cautions him about the racism and danger he will face in the South. The recent murders of two Black activists, Reverend George W. Lee and Lamar Smith, weigh on her mind.
« Be small, » she tells Emmett, and he jokingly hunches in on himself to oblige her. She laughs, but her smile masks an understandable fear.
In Mississippi, Emmett talks to Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett), a white woman, in a convenience store. Carolyn’s husband and his half-brother retaliate by abducting and murdering Emmett. In the aftermath of his death, Mamie channels her grief into activism, telling her son’s story to the public.
This is where Till, written by Chukwu and documentarian Keith Beauchamp (The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till), spends the bulk of its runtime. About the first third of the film covers the time before Emmett’s murder; the rest focuses on Mamie’s reaction. The choice to center on Mamie proves an effective one. In doing this, Chukwu celebrates Till-Mobley’s contribution to history and treats her mourning of Emmett with care.
How does Till handle Emmett Till’s murder?
Upon the release of its first trailer, a major concern about Till was whether the film would exploit Black trauma instead of sensitively exploring Emmett’s death. Be assured: Chukwu does not show any onscreen violence toward Emmett. In his death scene, the film cuts to a wide shot of the house, where Emmett’s murderers have him captive. We hear his screams from a distance.
The sequence is chilling, but Chukwu makes a conscious effort not to linger on Emmett’s pain. Instead, Till concentrates on the emotional pain experienced in the wake of Emmett’s death. In doing so, the film risks treating grief as a spectacle. More often than not, though, its framing of pain comes from a place of empathy. For example, when Emmett’s body is sent back to Chicago, Mamie hugs his casket and sobs; the camera stays close as she mourns. The closeness invites us to grieve alongside Mamie instead of placing her on a distant pedestal where we can observe her pain from afar.
In perhaps its most harrowing scene, Mamie sees Emmett’s body for the first time. Chukwu primes viewers for what they’re about to see, first hiding his remains behind another morgue table, then slowly panning up and pushing in until we see what Emmett’s attackers did to him. We may not witness Emmett’s death onscreen, but we do see the violence enacted on his body in grim detail.
As in real life, Mamie has a photographer take a picture of her son’s remains to show the public the truth about what happened to Emmett. She holds an open-casket funeral for the same reason, refusing to let the world look away. Till pays respects to Till-Mobley’s choice by holding on Emmett’s dead body in an effort to replicate her refusal to gloss over the horror of his murder.
The choices surrounding how Till deals with violence and its aftermath all seem to come back to the same principle: How would Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003, have wanted Emmett’s life and death to be depicted? In this way, even its hardest-to-handle scene comes from a place of respect.
Danielle Deadwyler anchors Till as Mamie Till-Mobley.
As Mamie, Deadwyler has to shoulder a lot of weight, both in terms of Till‘s narrative and the amount of grief and conviction she has to portray. Deadwyler is absolutely stunning in a performance that is sure to be a major contender come awards season. Her every scene, whether she’s singing along with her son or making her way through a hostile crowd, is a whirlwind of beautifully wrought emotion. Yet there is no better encapsulation of Deadwyler’s work here than a third-act courtroom scene.
As Mamie takes the stand to testify in the trial to convict Emmett’s murderers, Chukwu pushes in on Deadwyler’s face. She does not cut away, making sure our full attention remains on Mamie throughout the questioning. The simply shot scene captures every flicker of pain crossing Mamie’s face, every pause to consider her next words, and every attempt to re-center herself in the face of the men who murdered her child.
Deadwyler’s delivery is raw and devastating. She deserved awards recognition for her tremendous work in Station Eleven. She will most certainly receive awards and acclaim for her turn in Till. Her stellar portrayal elevates the film, even when Till strays into the pitfalls of biopics. In this subgenre, it’s tough to reconcile our knowledge of history with the tension the film attempts to build. We spend much of the movie stewing in dread, even as Till tries to build hope.
Also, this film is so entirely focused on Mamie that it forgets to develop other characters. As Emmett, Hall delivers a warm, sweet performance. But Till doesn’t let us get to know him much as a person before his death. The same goes for Mamie’s mother Alma (Whoopi Goldberg), who is present for a few scenes but doesn’t get much to do.
Overall though, Chukwu, Beauchamp, and Deadwyler have created a sensitive and compelling look at a horrific moment in American history. Emmett and Mamie’s story proves to be a piece of the past that is necessary to revisit — especially from Mamie’s perspective.
When I learned about Emmett Till in school, we barely touched on Mamie’s activism, sticking solely to the horror of Emmett’s death. Till rights the wrongs of these blind spots, giving an overlooked figure her due by presenting Mamie as a heroine in the civil rights movement who deserves far more acknowledgment than the general public has given her.
Till opens in theaters Oct. 14.
