Till | Little White Lies

Till

04 Jan 2023 / Released: 06 Jan 2023

Words by Rógan Graham

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu

Starring Danielle Deadwyler and Jalyn Hall

A group of men sitting and standing outside a shop with a "Sold" sign, wearing casual clothing in shades of blue and white.
A group of men sitting and standing outside a shop with a "Sold" sign, wearing casual clothing in shades of blue and white.
3

Anticipation.

Some trepidation, but certainly intrigued. Chinonye Chukwu’s Clemency, from 2019, was great.

4

Enjoyment.

A deeply moving and powerful film.

4

In Retrospect.

Well worth your time, especially if this story is a blind spot.

Chi­nonye Chuk­wu directs a mag­nif­i­cent Danielle Dead­wyler and Jalyn Hall as they play Emmett Till and his griev­ing moth­er, Mamie.

Before the film Till was seen, the need for its exis­tence was called into ques­tion. Anoth­er exhaust­ed Hol­ly­wood depic­tion of Black suf­fer­ing,’ the online cho­rus sang, as though stamp­ing the truth of our his­to­ry into the main­stream con­scious­ness is some­how shame­ful. Direct­ed by Chi­nonye Chuk­wu, who fol­lows up her bru­tal 2019 break­out film Clemen­cy, Till is an expert­ly mea­sured and respect­ful por­tray­al of the life of Mamie Till-Mob­ley after her 14-year-old son, Emmett Till, was mur­dered by white supremacists.

For those unfa­mil­iar with the sto­ry, young Emmett was raised in Chica­go by his sin­gle moth­er, and in the Sum­mer of 1955 was sent down to Mis­sis­sip­pi to vis­it his cousins. After whistling at a white woman, Car­olyn Bryant, he was dragged from his bed by John Bryant and JW Mil­am and, a few nights lat­er, was lynched.

The film’s strengths lie, for one, in its impec­ca­ble cast­ing. Danielle Dead­wyler was gift­ed the impos­si­ble task of embody­ing a woman whose pri­vate life was lit­tle known and her pub­lic life was coloured by soul-destroy­ing grief and indig­nance. Jalyn Hall, born in 2007, was tasked with bring­ing to life a young boy known only for his bru­tal death. Hall por­trays Emmett with the naivety and con­fi­dence you would expect from a child wrapped tight­ly in his mother’s love. His per­for­mance is so impact­ful that one might recoil in despair know­ing of his fate.

It is in those moments, that the need to depict the vio­lence done to Emmett becomes redun­dant, and Chuk­wu is mas­ter­ful enough to know that. But what we do see, what Mamie want­ed us to see almost 70 years ago, was Emmett’s dead body. The reveal of his body is anoth­er sur­re­al burst of colour: water­logged and blud­geoned, he lies on an exam­in­ers table pink, pur­ple and dis­fig­ured. From this moment onward, the sto­ry becomes focused on Mamie Till-Mob­ley trans­form­ing into an activist, and the sham Mis­sis­sip­pi tri­al. Painstak­ing years of research are stitched into every detail of this film, yet it’s here that we idle into paint-by-num­bers Oscar biopic ter­ri­to­ry. Speech­es are made, the over­wrought score becomes a sup­port­ing char­ac­ter and we can feel Mamie (right­ful­ly) being wres­tled into a his­to­ry that is not exclu­sive to Black Americans.

The func­tion of Till is to bear wit­ness to a mother’s grief and the birth of a civ­il rights icon, the same way Mamie demand­ed we bear wit­ness to her child’s mur­der. Chuk­wu directs a com­pelling trib­ute to what Mamie endured and achieved, yet for any­one famil­iar with the his­to­ry, new insight is per­haps lack­ing. With his­to­ries like that of the Till’s, so often dimin­ish­ing­ly referred to as Black Trau­ma’ sto­ries, it feels near impos­si­ble in Hol­ly­wood to strike the bal­ance between hon­est and sala­cious, but Chuk­wu has got­ten the clos­est so far.

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