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Till (2022)

Rate: 7
Viewed: 4/23

Till
4/23: Nobody cares about Emmett Till.

If they did, then the movie wouldn't be made this late. If they did, Till wouldn't have grossed $11.2 million against a budget of $20 million. If they did, Joe Biden wouldn't have signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act on March 29, 2022, almost seventy years after the murder occurred. The last part is a travesty because the president is a confirmed racist who only did it to score political points when lynching isn't a thing nowadays, not for decades anyway.

It doesn't mean I don't care, but I didn't know about the story until recently. This speaks volumes to how obscure the whole thing was. On the other hand, it's incorrect to say the incident led to the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act which would later be improved on; rather, it's the case of Brown v. Board of Education that did.

There are many shocking elements to the crime, and there's one that stands out the most: the mother's decision to show Emmett's beaten face to the world. I have to say she made the right decision: it's an indication of the ugly racist past the United States of America can't escape from.

Back to the film, Till is probably 80% accurate, if not less. The Jet magazine cover is fake; in fact, nothing about the murder appeared on the front; just stupid blurbs such as "Strange Facts Behind the Moore-Marciano Fight" and "How Many Negroes in College?" with a half naked picture of some black student. When everybody walked by the casket to see Emmett, he's supposed to be behind a glass window, probably to contain the stench. Nobody gave high-fives back then. The grandmother wasn't the reason why Emmett was interested in going to Mississippi; his uncle came over and told him stories about there which got him excited. Mose Wright was actually asked by the prosecuting lawyer to point out one of the kidnappers; hence, it wasn't random.

I wish Till was made earlier so they could do it right. Instead, the filmmakers decided to fill in a lot of time focusing on the mother's internal struggle with what happened when they should've let the facts of the case dictate the flow. Hence, it's been a long movie, wasting valuable time. It's also sparklingly clean and white; had the look been more ordinary in a 50's way, it would be perfect.

As Mamie Bradley, Danielle Deadwyler gives a performance that ranges between fine and good, but it feels like a ploy to win an Oscar; hence, the title should've been 130 Minutes of Mother's Grief. What she said during the trial isn't what the real Mamie Bradley said for the most part. There's no lecture or anything of that kind; she answered the questions in a matter-of-factly manner although many were irrelevant, immaterial, and heavily centered on the identification of Emmett's mutilated body. The important testimony she made about how he ought to act with white people only occurred in the absence of the jury. A male stenographer was used, not a female.

By the way, Emmett Till's biological father is mentioned several times in the film, and he was reported to have died overseas while in service. The truth is he was a wife-beater, a rapist, and a murderer who was summarily executed in Italy, but it has nothing to do with Emmett's murder anyway.

Today, the two murderers are deceased, having died so long ago, so who cares about these white trash? They were paid $1,500 each by Look magazine for their confession. The woman responsible for the whole thing, Carolyn Bryant Donham, is still alive today, but she refuses to talk about what actually happened inside the store which is what nobody knows for sure.

Going out of business just after the murder because of the widespread boycott by blacks, Bryant Grocery & Meat Market is still standing although in dilapidated state. Money, Mississippi, is barely alive with the last known residence count of less than 100. The same is said for Mound Bayou which has fallen mightily hard. Booker T. Washington once considered the all-black community as the model of "thrift and self-government." Taborian Hospital is no longer there today.

Because of what happened during the trial, the body of Emmett Till was exhumed in 2005 for reaffirmation through DNA testing to prove it's been him all along. It's a low point of the entire ordeal, and his mother had to suffer them all for so long.

All in all, the story of Emmett Till should've been a movie a long time ago for historical reference, but the fact that it got made in 2022 says a lot of people not caring a farthing about him.