Worth: $14.50
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Cast:
Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Whoopi Goldberg
Intro:
… packs an emotional punch.
There is a larger conversation to be had regarding the legacy of Black trauma on film. Typically, stories frame the experience around pain and hardship, as if that is the experience, beginning and end. While not every attempt to capitalise on such things garners acclaim –Antebellum, thankfully, was rightfully trounced on release – and the semi-recent rise in Black filmmakers taking the reins has altered the course somewhat, the shadow cast by darlings like Crash, The Help, and even Green Book is a long one.
With that in mind, a film based on the 1955 lynching and murder of Emmett Till (played here by Jalyn Hall), a crucial moment in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement, very easily could fall into the same category. But credit to director Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency) and DP Bobby Bukowski taking great pains to avoid such imagery, even with the public showing of Emmett’s body as a main plot point.
The film takes the Fruitvale Station route, showing Till as a human being, flaws and all, rather than just a sacrificial lamb, to the point where we only ever see the aftermath of the violence inflicted on him. This is something that would be its own set-piece in most other films, whereas the mental image alone sells the horror just as well.
To that end, the film primarily focuses on these events as they impacted Emmett’s mother Mamie (played with disarming realism by Danielle Deadwyler, The Harder The Fall). The natural urge to protect her child bolsters the story’s racial overtones with an underlying maternal humanism. Bukowski’s use of long takes gives Deadwyler many an opportunity to emote the absolute hell out of her dialogue, and she takes each one with both hands.
More than anything resembling direct justice, what the film ultimately conveys is the sheer exhaustion that is the road to get that justice. The invasive cross-examination of Mamie and Emmett’s characters in the courtroom, the advice given for existing in White spaces and how an interaction between two people across racial lines is never just between them (the mechanics of White privilege on full display), Haley Bennett’s lynchpin role as Carolyn Bryant, the original Karen; there’s palpable frustration through a lot of this. The most impactful moment isn’t even in the film proper, but in the pre-credits text-on-black-background that really drives home just how slow progress really is.
Till is held back somewhat by being yet another ‘prestige’ film insisting on needlessly going longer than two hours, along with unfortunate emotional dead spots and truly bewildering product placement. But it’s kept together through Danielle Deadwyler’s mesmerising performance, and the production’s insistence on relaying genuine experiences rather than merely being an avenue for performative audience allyship. There’s an argument to be made that a film based on an event this impactful should itself have as much impact, but it still packs an emotional punch.
