Till is a shy film about a terrible historical truth
The story of a lynching that shook America
The name of Emmett Till still represents something important and painful in American history today. A 14-year-old African American from Chicago in the turbulent America of the early 1950s, he was visiting some relatives in Money, Mississippi. Only a corpse would return. His fault? Him daring to speak to Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. A few days later, Bryant's husband, Rob, and his half-brother J. W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett in the middle of the night, then tortured and killed him in a shed. His death, his mother Mamie Till's fight for justice, ended up on the front pages of the world. That event would change American society forever, providing an incredible boost to the civil rights movement, making their struggle a national concern. The American public finally became aware of that reign of injustice, violence and horror that was still the southern states of the United States. From the death of Emmett Till, but above all from the courage of his mother Mamie, who in spite of threats, pressure and pain, decided to show the world how her son had been reduced and to testify in court, Chinonye Chukwu drew this Till – the Courage of a Mother.You People tells the new racism with a hilarious Eddie Murphy The comedy produced and written by Jonah Hill for Netflix has the best intentions but only Murphy seems able to use humor (and he is the only one who saves really the film)
In the role of Mamie Till we find a very good and credible Danielle Deadwyler , who from the first to the last minute gives everything to make this film work. However Till is afflicted by too many problems, too many underlying defects, to be something that justifies the unanimous acclaim that he has been able to garner in his homeland. Of course, the relevance of the topic, given the absolutely critical and terrible moment that American society has been experiencing for at least a couple of years now, with the umpteenth murder of an African American at the hands of the police, can explain why it goes beyond an objective judgment of merit. Till suffers from a form defect, from a lack of inspiration and above all from such macroscopic narrative flaws, that at the moment the protests for a failure to be included in the nominations for the Oscars are as understandable from an emotional point of view as objectively unjustified.
Today we try to see in a splendid actor's performance the sine qua non on the success or failure of a film, but we must remember that there are many, too many other variables at play and this time Chukwu is unable to guide his creature to safe waters.
A wrong film in terms of aesthetics and narrative
Till has an excessively verbose screenplay, who indulges in unnecessary lengthiness in parts that have no relevance to the ultimate goal of the diegetic process, while instead he treats others in a rather hasty way. But above all, from the beginning, Till the is afflicted by the same problem that has marred several biopics released in recent years, as well as other films devoted to stirring consciences: an excess of glamour. Cinematography by Bobby Bukowski, sets by Cassaundra Marie and costumes by Marci Rodgers, make the whole a sort of sweetened journey. Bright lights and pastel colors create a feeling of artificiality that increases exponentially as you go along. Not a hairdo out of place, not a dirty dress or a wisp of dust on the walls, on the floors, on the hands of those who were made ugly by work in the fields and by fear.Difficult to understand when you are in Chicago and when instead we are in that South, where at the time lynching black people was a sort of pastime. As if that weren't enough, Till wastes a worthless supporting cast, which includes Frankie Faison, Haley Bennett and Whoopi Goldberg.
The great epic of The Woman King innovates very little (and copies a lot) The film in theaters is the classic great American-style exotic show with more flaws than merits
Making civilized cinema is not easy, you need audacity and sensitivity, the ability to go deep; here instead we were satisfied with the surface, with a sort of praise of pain that becomes rhetorical and inconstant pornography. We show that body reduced to pieces that made the history of American conscience, but we are spared the scene of her death, it remains in the background, as if not wanting to disturb our conscience. Maybe seeing Haley Bennett as the cruel and lying Carolyn Bryant is enough? Maybe that racist insults, the climate of opposition that Till tries to show us is something new? No.
From Mississippi Burning to To Kill a Mockingbird, from Inspector Tibbs' Hot Night to Judas and the Black Messiah, cinematography is full of great films that have dealt with this theme.
Till adds nothing, except great pretentiousness, dry dialogues, an intrusive and often out of place soundtrack by Abel Korzeniowski. The truth is that this is a film with good intentions but with a bad result, as many have been in recent years, passed off as masterpieces for a mere discourse of political and social utility. Understandable, but not justifiable, as can be said of the Woman King or Wakanda Forever. It is not too harsh to say that Emmett Till deserved better than this film.
