Till (2022)

Score: 5 / 5

Finally, a biopic about the Till family released the same year that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act has been signed by the president. Can you imagine? It's 2022 and lynching is finally a federal hate crime. And it's thanks, in no small part, to the decades of hard work from Mamie Till-Mobley, his bereaved mother, who became an activist after her son's brutal murder. This film is indeed a biopic of her life with particular focus on the period of time immediately following Emmett's death, including the media frenzy, the trial, and her early activism as she navigates the shattering of the boundary between private and public life.

The first act of Till dramatizes the events around the end of Emmett Till's life. Jalyn Hall plays the fourteen-year-old boy, excited to head south to visit with his cousins in Mississippi. It's just a taste of his story, but the screenwriters have to establish some of his identity for us in ways that the media of the time largely ignored; rather than allow us to think of Emmett as a juvenile delinquent or "thug" who might have been asking for trouble, this early introduction humanizes the boy and reminds us that real people are so much more interesting and complex than headlines allow us to remember. It's no less eye-opening to see the ways Emmett, who lives in Chicago with his mother, has trouble changing his interactions with white people when he's suddenly in an environment quite hostile to him. That's not to say Chicago didn't have its racist moments too -- at least one scene in a store depicts this -- but the massive culture shift to rural Mississippi is something that Emmett senses but cannot quite understand. Any slight against a white person is amplified in ways that escape him.

It's all the more heartbreaking to see this disconnect because his mother had given him such stern lessons before his trip. Mamie has clearly had consistent, continuous conversations with her son about the dangers of navigating spaces dominated by white people and how to stay safe and fly under the radar. They've made do for themselves in Chicago, but she knows full well the perils of Southern inhospitality. She knows "rabble rousers" and other Black activists are being targeted and murdered. She reminds Emmett to "be small" and to come back to her safely at any cost. It's heartbreaking to watch in so many ways, not least because Danielle Deadwyler imbues each glance at the boy with masterful control of love and sorrow, fear and hope. She barely moves her face in these early scenes: her absolute control over her own face and voice is both a Deadwyler skill and, I suspect, a character choice. Mamie, as a relatively independent Black woman in Chicago in 1955, has cultivated a voice and demeanor and appearance that lets her fit in well enough with white folks to get by without issue. She keeps every emotion in fierce check, exhibiting a fairly stoic disposition unless she's safe at home with her family.

Then the expected happens. We know that Emmett Till was murdered mere days into his trip. In late August, he has a documented and much-disputed interaction with a young white woman working at a store in Money, Mississippi. The film's dramatization of this surprised me a bit, as many stories over the decades since have offered differing accounts. We may never know what all actually happened between them, but the film seems to pull from multiple stories to flesh out the scenario: Emmett is struck by Carolyn Bryant's (Haley Bennett) beauty and compares her to a movie star, he shows her a stock photo that came with his new wallet without describing it as such, and then he "wolf whistles" at her. It's not as ambiguous as perhaps it should be; other accounts of the real story have indicated that Emmett's whistling was a tool to help with his stutter. Regardless, the film makes choices of what to recreate and how, and I think the writers capably adapt the story for its full effect.

Director Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency) hits another heavy drama out of the park with Till. She smartly moves things along at a deliberate but brisk pace, letting the scene of the crime pass by with less spectacle than most filmmakers would prefer. We get a terrifying scene of the men barging into the house where Emmett was staying and abducting him from his bedroom, but the actual torture and lynching is only alluded to in a single wide shot of a barn lit at night while Emmett screams in the distance. It's a powerful move to not depict the violence, and it's definitely the right move for this film. Chukwu doesn't ignore the pain of the situation though -- far from it -- and from here the movie squarely belongs to Deadwyler as Mamie. Her haunting sorrow will stick with you for a long time after the credits roll, and it helps that Deadwyler is so committed to depicting every possible emotion running through her character's head. And it just keeps going, as her family (and mother, played by Whoopi Goldberg in an underutilized role) gathers around her, as the NAACP reaches out, and ultimately as she travels to Mississippi herself.

Chukwu's control over the film is undeniable, and I hope she makes a lot more movies. Clemency was one of the my favorite movies of 2019, mostly because of her ability to harness, guide, and showcase the talent she puts on screen. One of the moments in Till that most reminded me of Chukwu's unique skills is when Mamie testifies in court: the incredible scene -- and transcendent performance from Deadwyler -- features a long take of Mamie's face as she runs the gamut of emotional responses to delivering her own testimony, from controlled weeping to a near convulsion as her eyes flutter and finally to an icy hot conviction as she declares with no doubt that the body she identified was indeed her son's.

It's an astonishing film. Not least because it doesn't actually depict physical violence on Black bodies even while it honors Till-Mobley's famous decision to let the world see what it had done to her son's body. Its music and cinematography are stunning, but the performances and storytelling make it one of the few truly great films of the year. Its timeliness is hammered home at the end, as onscreen text tells us that the injustice of Emmett's murder only grew with the trial and its fallout, as none of the murderers or Carolyn herself have ever been punished. The Anti-Lynching Act is great, but so is justice. Thank God Mamie knew that and became the activist we should all be.