The film was officially announced in August 2020, though a project about Emmett Till's murder had been in the works for several years prior. Much of the main cast joined the following summer, and filming took place in Bartow County, Georgia, that fall. It is the second major media property based on Mamie Till to be released in 2022, following the television series Women of the Movement. The film is dedicated in memory of Mamie Till's life and legacy and its release coincided with the October 2022 unveiling of a statue in Emmett Till's memory in Greenwood, Mississippi.[5]
In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till lived with his mother, Mamie, at 6427 South Saint Lawrence Ave in Chicago, Illinois. Before Emmett leaves to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi, Mamie warns him to be extra careful around white people. At a train station, the Tills meet with Mamie's uncle, Mose "Preacher" Wright, and Emmett's cousin, Wheeler Parker. After picking cotton on a sharecropper plantation, Emmett and his cousins purchase candy at the Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market. At the cash register, Emmett tells Carolyn Bryant that she looks like a movie star before showing her a photograph of a white girl in his wallet. Carolyn follows Emmett outside of the store, where he whistles at her. Disgusted, Carolyn retrieves a shotgun from her vehicle as Till and his relatives flee from the store.
In the early hours of August 28, Carolyn's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, John William "J. W." Milam, arrive at the Wrights' house and force themselves inside. They locate Emmett inside one of the bedrooms and force him to put on his clothes before kidnapping him. Emmett’s great-aunt Elizabeth offers the men money, but Milam refuses. Before leaving, Milam holds Wright hostage with a gun. Inside one of the other vehicles, Carolyn identifies Till and the Bryants drive off into the night. Emmett is then badly beaten, fatally shot, and his body is dumped into the Tallahatchie River.
Back in Chicago, Mamie is informed of Emmett's kidnapping. Her cousin, Rayfield Mooty, arranges her to meet with William Huff, the counsel for the NAACP chapter in Chicago. At his office, Huff inquires about Mamie's past marriages as her personal history will be questioned. Meanwhile, the police locate Till's corpse along the river. Upon hearing the news, Mamie collapses in shock. Despite Mooty's reservations, Mamie asks for Emmett's body to be transferred back to Chicago. Shortly after, his coffin arrives on train, and Mamie cries in anguish upon seeing it. After seeing Emmett's mutilated corpse on an autopsy table, Mamie has an open casket funeral for Emmett to reveal what had been done to him. Emmett's killing and funeral garner national headlines across America.
Milam and Bryant are charged for their actions in relation to Till's killing. Accompanied by her father, Mamie travels to Mound Bayou to help represent Emmett for the trial. At the Regional Council, headed by T. R. M. Howard, Howard asks Mamie to consider her future after the trial as her activism can help galvanize federal support for voting rights toward Black Americans. On the first day of the trial, the defense team requests a recess after learning of another witness, to which the judge agrees and adjourns.
During the recess, the prosecution locates Willie Reed, who was an eyewitness to Till's killing. The next day, Wright and Reed give their testimonies, and the former identifies Milam as the culprit who held his family at gunpoint. Next, Mamie goes before the trial, testifying she could identify the corpse as her son. The defense then cross-examines Mamie, as she had told the "colored press" she warned Emmett on how to conduct himself in Mississippi. Later, on the witness stand, Carolyn Bryant testifies that Emmett grabbed her by the waist[7] and told her that he had previous interracial romance. Angered, Mamie leaves the courtroom sure that she already knows the verdict.
After an hour, the all-white and all-male Mississippi jury[8] acquits Milam and Bryant of Till's killing. Later, at an NAACP rally in Harlem, Mamie criticizes the Mississippi criminal justice system for victim blaming and the United States for failing in its promise for equal justice. She returns home and fondly remembers Emmett as she imagines him in his room.
The post-credits state that Mamie's actions galvanized the Civil Rights Act of 1957. She dedicated her life to teaching children while continuing to fight for civil rights in America.
Till is the second last film by United Artists Releasing under the banner of Orion Pictures, following the shutdown of the predecessor company by Amazon Studios due to the lack of box office like Bones and All and Women Talking (also being the last film) as a result of general public no longer supporting prestige films released during the late-2022 awards season period, and the decision of the Amazon Studios' Air in theatres in 2023 following the 96th Academy Awards buzz. Women Talking is also a last film following the Amazon's acquisition of Orion Pictures.[22]
The film was released for VOD platforms on November 22, 2022, followed by a Blu-ray and DVD release on January 17, 2023.[23]
Reception
Box office
In the United States and Canada, the film made $242,269 from 16 theaters in its opening weekend.[24][25] It held this record as the highest platform release opening of the year until The Whale two months later.[26] In its second weekend the film made $363,541 from 104 theaters.[27] Expanding to 2,058 theaters in its third weekend, the film made $1.03 million on its first day[28] and would go on to gross $2.7 million over the weekend, finishing sixth.[29] In its second weekend of wide release the film made $1.88 million (marking a drop of 32%).[30]Variety attributed these results to the general public showing the early stages of refusal to see and support prestige films in theaters in a moviegoing environment altered by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the possibility that the film's subject matter may have been seen as uncomfortable for audiences to handle.[31]
Critical response
Danielle Deadwyler's performance as Mamie Till garnered widespread acclaim.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 195 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Till reframes an historically horrific murder within a mother's grief, brought heartwrenchingly to life by Danielle Deadwyler's tremendous performance."[32]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[33] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare average grade of "A+", and those at PostTrak gave the film a 91% overall positive score, with 87% saying they definitely would recommend it.[28]
Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post gave the film four complete stars, writing: "It's Deadwyler who holds our attention—our gaze and our hearts—and who does so with a masterful control. Even at Mamie's most shattered, an inextinguishable ember of courage and purpose seems to smolder at the core of the character."[34]Peter Travers of ABC News felt Till "is more than a movie—it's essential viewing." He further praised Deadwyler's performance, writing she "is too good to let a movie turn Black trauma into cheesy Oscar bait. Even when the film lets conventional biopic tropes mess with momentum, Deadwyler never loses her uncanny connection to the female warrior she's playing."[35]Manohla Dargis of The New York Times highlighted Chukwa's fixed focus on Mamie Till, to which she also praised Deadwyler for "delivering a quiet, centralizing performance that works contrapuntally with the story's heaviness, its profundity and violence."[36]
Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune also noted Chukwa's direction and Deadwyler's performance, but felt more screen time was needed to justify "Mamie's transformation from relatively apolitical Chicagoan to an urgently engaged citizen of a wider world."[37]Richard Brody of The New Yorker stated the film "is a work of mighty cinematic portraiture, with a range of closeups of Mamie that infuse the film with an overwhelming combination of subjective depth and an outward sense of purpose. These images depend for that vast spectrum of feeling upon Deadwyler's performance, one of the most radiantly, resonantly expressive to grace the screen this year."[38] Brian Lowry of CNN felt there's "a difficult-to-avoid aspect to the production that can't entirely escape a movie-of-the-week feel," but nevertheless wrote: "Anchored by Danielle Deadwyler's towering performance, it's a wrenching portrayal of reluctant heroism under the most horrific of parental circumstances."[39]
Peter Debruge of Variety wrote: "It would take a tough constitution not to be moved by Till, although that doesn't necessarily make it great drama ... Chukwu's first wish is clearly not to re-victimize Emmett Till, but in eliding such details and avoiding the torture, Chukwu relies perhaps too much on our imagination."[40] Kate Erbland, reviewing on the website Indiewire, gave the film a mixed response: "While Deadwyler turns in a remarkable performance as Mamie, beautifully calibrating her love and anger in one riveting package, the rest of Till is prone to trope-ridden, predictable sequences that do little to advance her story or Emmett's legacy."[41]
President Joe Biden greets cast members Jalyn Hall and Chukwu before a screening of the movie Till on February 16, 2023, in the Blue Room of the White House
Despite receiving nominations in several other ceremonies, Deadwyler was controversially not nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress at the 95th Academy Awards, prompting Chukwu to criticise the film industry for "upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women".[42][43] In the wake of this decision, widely considered a snub,[44] film critic Robert Daniels of the Los Angeles Times lamented on how the film industry at large fails Black women, with the lack of a nomination for Deadwyler or Viola Davis in The Woman King serving to exemplify this.[45]
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