Barbara Broccoli doesn’t just make Bond films and her CV as producer of serious issue cinema expands with the release of TILL.
Directed by Chinonye Chukwu with a screenplay by Michael Reilly & Keith Beauchamp and Chukwu, TILL tells the traumatic true tale of the historic lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till, for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi in 1955. Seriously.
The film begins with Emmett and his mum, Mamie, driving in their car, cruising to the radio playing Sincerely by The Moonglows. There is both the sense of joy and impending doom in the scene, a sense that pervades the first act of the movie.
At once, the cinematic language and tone of TILL is deeply rooted in the mutual affection between mother and child and the inherent pain and heartbreak of loss.
TILL is a film about aftermath of the traumatic, physical violence inflicted upon Emmett. It is about Mamie’s remarkable journey in the aftermath. She is grounded by the love for her child, for at its core, TILL is a love story of a mother for her boy, and a righteous retribution.
Mamie becomes politically engaged, insisting that the world witness the horror of her brutally maimed and murdered son’s body in an open casket viewing as an act of defiance against oppression and hate. “I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy,” she said at the time. She gave the exclusive rights to Jet Magazine to publish the images of her son’s brutalised and bloated body which caused the lynching to gain worldwide notoriety.
Mamie’s unflinching audacity became a lightning rod in the Civil Rights Movement and propelled her to become an outspoken activist for the NAACP advocating for social justice and education.
With a galvanising central performance from Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie, TILL is a film that demands attention.
The events depicted in TILL happened in 1955 but audiences will be confronted with present cultural and political realities within this film. Bold film making deserving of a bold audience.
