Till: Film Review
If you know the story of Emmett Till then you will have some idea of how tough Till is to watch. If you don’t, then you definitely need to watch this film because everyone should be aware of what happened to him.
Chinonye Chukwu‘s film tells the story of Till (Jalyn Hall), a Black 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was lynched for whistling at a white woman, a shopkeeper named Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett), while visiting his family in Money, Mississippi in 1955. The story is told from the perspective of his mother Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler) and largely focuses on the astounding decisions she made in the aftermath of her son’s brutal murder.
I knew Till’s story well so I went into this film really worried about what I was going to see. The murder of Till was barbaric, sickening and depraved. You can read all about it online if you want but you won’t see it here. We are spared the violence and this is the correct choice. We don’t need to see it – alluding to it briefly through sound is enough and our imagination can do the rest.
But you do have to bear witness to his unrecognisable body afterwards – and you can draw your own conclusions from that. Mamie famously made the decision to hold an open casket funeral and invite press to take photos because she wanted the world to see what they did to her child. She knew nobody would believe it otherwise. So this film gives Mamie her wish – we have to see it. I knew what the shocking real photo looked like and I was still unprepared for the reveal, plus Deadwyler’s performance in that scene is heartbreaking.
Mamie was a formidable woman with unbelievable inner strength. I cannot fathom how she made such strong, clear-headed decisions after such an abhorrent tragedy and continued to be a powerful figure in the civil rights movement when others would crumble in despair. Deadwyler really does her justice. Occasionally, she went too big and oversold it but she is so moving in the subtle scenes where you just watch her chin wobble and a tear fall from her eye as she tries to keep it together. I’m amazed she didn’t receive a Golden Globe nomination for her staggering work.
Hall is adorable as the charismatic Till (known as Bobo by his family), who forgot that he cannot behave in Mississippi as he can in Chicago. It was sadly a whole different world for Black people down there. Whoopi Goldberg has a small role as Mamie’s concerned mother Alma, and Bennett makes a brief but pivotal appearance as Bryant. I was surprised she signed up to play such an awful person but kudos to her for agreeing to it.
Till is a tough watch that had me in tears in the beginning, middle and end. I thought his story was widely known here in the UK but some of my friends had no idea, so I’m glad this film exists to shine a light on this tragedy.
In cinemas from Friday 6th January