Entering the theater, darkness engulfing me, I hoped that Till would break my heart. 

Directed by Chinonye Chukwu, Till brings the story of Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) and his mother, Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler), to the big screen.

Knowing Emmett Till dies isn’t a spoiler; it is a fact. I wanted it to hurt when it happened on the big screen, and it did. Till does a wonderful job of building up suspense to an event the viewers already know is going to happen. From Mamie Till’s constant worry about Emmett going down South to Mississippi to Emmett’s carefree nature and naivety, the first half of the movie is somehow filled with a simultaneous sense of doom and hope, knowing Mamie’s fears are going to come true yet praying that  history would change and Emmett would survive. 

Of course, he doesn’t. Even so, the way Deadwyler portrays Mamie Till’s worry, hope and grief is awe-inspiring. The emotions are not pretty or sensationalized; they reek of pain, agony and sorrow. Every time Deadwyler cries, I want to close my ears and protect myself from her suffering. 

But Mamie wants her suffering to be heard.

She wants the world to see the suffering her child went through moments before his death. Deadwyler brings Mamie Till back to life.

The scenes of Emmett Till’s open casket funeral are hard to watch. The depiction of Emmett’s body hardly looked human, which was the point of the open casket funeral in the first place. In fact,  Emmett’s death isn’t explicitly shown on screen, merely implied. A great choice on the director’s part. It feels important, not to show the violence, merely the result of it. To show exactly how Emmett Till is tortured before his death is pointless when his and others’ suffering is so palpable in the aftermath, and I admire that decision.  

After Emmett’s death, the movie continues a push and pull between Mamie Till, who simply wants justice for what happened to her child, and the NAACP, who wants to use Emmett’s death to push the Civil Rights Movement forward. Immersing the audience in the politics and racism of the time, the movie physically deposits you in the 1950s, an era so different from the present yet so similar.

Till does what a documentary could not: it makes you live in those moments with Mamie, experience her emotions, her pain, her determination. Every moment of the 130 minutes made me rage at the suffering, at the indifference, shown on screen. Till is a movie that touches your heart and takes hold of your mind at the same time. 

I stepped out of the theater back into the 2022, feeling bittersweet. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which makes lynching a federal hate crime, was passed on March 29 of this year. 

With an amazing cast and a touching portrayal of the true story of Mamie Till, Till is a must watch, leaving viewers emotional yet content in the end.

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