Till

 

Till

Till is a movie of love and hate. Love is the absolute love a mother has for her child alive or dead. Hate is the intractable bigotry and violence of segregated 1950’s Mississippi. The Emmitt Till story is well known. Till was a fourteen-year-old boy who went to visit his cousins in Money Mississippi. He was falsely accused of cat calling a white woman and she claimed he tried to grab her. Because of these false accusations he was abducted by the women’s husband and brother and taken to a shed where he was tortured, shot in the head and tossed into the Tallahassee River. Three days later his bloated body was recovered.

The director did not want to glorify the brutality visited on Till. Only a distant shed was shown, and muffled cries were heard. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open casket so the world could see the brutality of her son’s tortured body. This act spurred on the Civil Rights movement.

This basically is a two-actors movie with supporting performers. Danielle Deadwyler plays Mamie Till-Mobley, she inhabits the role. She gives a steely performance of a mother crushed by the murder of her son but not intimidated by fear. Deadwyler’s Mamie is controlled anger. Outwardly she was a smartly dressed colored woman in her pillbox hat, gloves and small bag but beneath the façade fury raged. Knowing there will be no justice in Mississippi she used the dead body of her son as indictment. Deadwyler should be an Oscar contender.

Jalyn Hall plays Emmitt Till. His nature is lighthearted and innocent. In his pork pie hat with an easy tooth gaped smile, he is out of his element in Mississippi. Raised in Chicago he does not clue into the mores of the south. His mother gave him the “talk” but like many children he is careless. Aside from his short appearance in the start of the movie he as seen as an apparition in later scenes.

Other characters have quick short appearances. Whoopie Goldberg play Mamie’s mother; Tosin Cole plays Medgar Evers and other actors as prominent civil rights leaders. Haley Bennett portrays Carolyn Bryant the shop keeper who falsely accused Till.

No one was convicted for the murder of Emmitt Till, they were acquitted. The Emmitt Till Anti Lynching Act was signed in March 2022, 67 years after his death. Carolyn Bryant is 88 years old and has never been charged with a crime.