[FILM]
TILL
Danielle Deadwyler gives a powerhouse performance as Mamie Till-Mobley;
★★★★ OUT 6 JANUARY / CERT 12A 130 MINS
DIRECTOR Chinonye Chukwu
CAST Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett, Whoopi Goldberg
PLOT 1955. While visiting Jim Crow-era Mississippi, Black teen Emmett Till (Hall) innocently flirts with white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett). He is subsequently brutally murdered. For Emmett’s mother Mamie (Deadwyler), his lynching ignites a powerful and historic crusade for accountability.
ON 28 AUGUST 1955 in Money, Mississippi, Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old African-American, was abducted, tortured and lynched for seemingly offending a white woman in a grocery store; his dead body, mutilated and unrecognisable, was discovered in the Tallahatchie river three days later. It is to the credit of filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency) that Till has no truck with depicting and therefore sensationalising the heinous crime. Instead, Chukwu reframes the story through the prism of Emmett’s mother Mamie’s fight for justice. It’s a smart move, finding hope in a tragedy without cheapening it, while playing out the narrative on a bigger civil-rights canvas — one that provides a subtle but stunning showcase for Danielle Deadwyler in the lead role. Exemplifying the film’s less-is-so-much-more approach, the Harder They Come actor elevates some pedestrian historical-drama writing into something compelling and touching in equal measure.