YNOT at the Movies

In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was brutally lynched in Mississippi. It took 67 years after his death for the Congress finally to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, and President Biden signed it into law earlier this year to make lynching a federal crime. This law, bearing Till's name, is the result of an enduring effort by so many civil rights leaders and activists. Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of the slain Emmett Till, is one of those fighters. The director Chinonye Chukwu brings Mamie's courageous story to light in her sentimental drama "Till" (USA 2022 | 130 min.). From a grieving mother's perspective, the film reveals the hideous racism in the era of Jim Crow laws, and the unjust legal system that protected white supremacists.

Because we already know what is going to happen to Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall), it's even more poignant to see how happy he is when shopping with his mom Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) in Chicago at the beginning of the film. Mamie calls him Bo. Even though Bo's dad died in World War II overseas, Mamie raises him a happy child, living a comfortable middle class life. While they still have relatives in the segregated Mississippi, Bo does not have a clear sense about what it is like to be black in the Jim Crow South.

Bo goes down to Mississippi to visit his cousins, and after an encounter with a white shopkeeper, he is kidnapped by a mob at gunpoint one night. A few days later, Bo's badly disfigured body is found in a river.

Despite being deeply shaken by the terrible tragedy, Mamie is determined to let the world see how her son was murdered by having an open casket memorial service for Bo. She wants to have racism on full display, hoping to make changes, and to make Americans change their minds about racism. She courageously travels to Mississippi to testify at the trial of two white men accused of Bo's murder. If it takes 67 years to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, we all know how that trial turned out.

This is surely a difficult movie to watch, no matter how carefully the filmmaker positions the camera to avoid emphasizing the victim's suffering. The overwhelmingly sad tone is further accelerated by an overladen music score. Mamie has her face covered with tears probably half of the time, and the rest of the time covered with rage. She has every reason to be outrageous after her son was violently robbed from her. Yet, she seems powerless confronting a racist legal system.

This is also a difficult movie for Chinonye Chukwu to make because it's a delicate balance between being viewed as exploration of the victims and being bold in exposing the barbarianism of lynching triggered by racial hatred. While Mamie decides to let the public see her son's bloated head from the horrendous violence, the director Chinonye Chukwu decides not to show the actual violence to Bo, instead hear only the screaming from him.

Throughout the film, almost all the characters, especially Mamie, always appear in impeccably tailored colorful dresses as if they are about to go to an evening event. Just like the music score, the beautifully looking costumes can become a distraction rather than create positive images of these characters.

Even though Mamie didn't get to live to see the antilynching law passed, her legacy lives on and continues to inspire us to fight racism. That's the affirming takeaway from this film.

"Till" opens in the San Francisco Bay Area on Friday, October 21, 2022.