Till (12A)

Mamie Till-Mobley lives in a middle class, all-black neighbourhood of 1955 Chicago with her 14-year-old son Emmett. The boy visits his cousins in Mississippi and violates an unspoken code of conduct by paying 21-year-old white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant a compliment. In the dead of night, Carolyn's hot-headed husband Roy and accomplices drag Emmett from his cousins' home and lynch the teenager. A grief-stricken Mamie fights for justice.

LondonNet Film Review

Till (12A) Film Review from LondonNet

In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi during a visit to his cousins. He was accused of making inappropriate advances to a white female store owner. Two men stood trial for killing Emmett and were found not guilty by an all-white jury. The following year, the men admitted to the crime in a magazine interview, protected against prosecution for the same offence by the double jeopardy clause in the US Constitution. Director Chinonye Chukwu’s harrowing drama relives this shocking chapter in modern US history and the subsequent quest for justice spearheaded by Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley…

Danielle Deadwyler electrifies every frame of Till as the grief-stricken yet defiant matriarch, urging her boy to be on his best behaviour in Mississippi (“Be smart down there”) and passionately advocating solidarity at a Harlem rally to effect change (“The lynching of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”) A script co-written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu is respectful to a fault and exercises restraint at the most critical juncture (Emmett’s horrific final moments are heard but not seen.)

Mamie Till-Mobley (Deadwyler) lives in a middle class, all-black neighbourhood of 1955 Chicago with her 14-year-old son Emmett (Jalyn Hall), who is about to visit his cousins down in Mississippi. She is reluctant to let her boy stray outside the city limits. “I don’t want him seeing himself the way those people are seen down there,” Mamie tells her mother Alma (Whoopi Goldberg), but she nervously relents and Emmett travels to the town of Money – population 398 – with his cousins Maurice (Diallo Thompson), Wheeler (Gem Collins) and Simmy (Tyrik Johnson).

At the Bryant’s Country Store, Emmett violates an unspoken code of conduct by paying 21-year-old white proprietor Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett) a compliment: “You look like a movie star.” In the dead of night, Carolyn’s hot-headed husband Roy (Sean Michael Weber), and accomplices, drag Emmett from his cousins’ home. A grief-stricken Mamie insists on an open coffin and the US is confronted with shocking images of Emmett’s bludgeoned face, which intensifies efforts by the NAACP to introduce legislation.

Till is a deeply affecting history lesson that does not stray outside clearly marked dramatic lines that relate to the court case and its aftermath. Deadwyler is sensational and richly merits a seat at the Academy Awards nominations table, with sterling support from Hall, who exudes fresh-faced innocence from his opening scene. Period detail is impeccable. As a bruising parting shot, closing title cards remind us that lynching only became a federal hate crime in March 29, 2022 when President Joe Biden signed The Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law. Chukwu’s picture could not be more timely.

– Sarah Lee