Post by Dracula on Feb 19, 2023 14:00:51 GMT -5
Till(1/21/2023)
I’m going to be honest, at this point I tend to view studio made films about well-known black history events with a certain suspicion. I’ve seen a lot of them and they often tend to be rather safe and sanitized version of events made more to inspire children than to really probe the events in question. There are exceptions of course, but for every Selma there are two Marshalls or 42s. Till a film about the death of Emmett Till and the events that followed it, sits somewhere in the middle of that spectrum because on some level it is still definitely a straightforward movie made with mainstream sensibilities in mind on some level, there was definitely some more thought put into it. The film was directed by Chinonye Chukwu, the director behind the indie film Clemency, who seems to have a knack for making films about women in psychologically taxing situations and for directing internally wounded performances. She’s cast Danielle Deadwyler in the central role of Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett, and it proved to be a pretty smart choice. Deadwyler is not a particularly famous name and that may well have limited the film’s box office somewhat but she was clearly the right person for the role and managed to really nail the interior anguish required and the film also does a good job of showing Emmet Till while he was alive as well. The film isn’t quite able to find the perfect structure for its third act, starting out as a kind of courtroom drama that maybe lacks suspence because the audience knows where it’s going and never quite manages to make her activist arc compelling either, but when it needs to work it works quite well.
***1/2 out of Five
I’m going to be honest, at this point I tend to view studio made films about well-known black history events with a certain suspicion. I’ve seen a lot of them and they often tend to be rather safe and sanitized version of events made more to inspire children than to really probe the events in question. There are exceptions of course, but for every Selma there are two Marshalls or 42s. Till a film about the death of Emmett Till and the events that followed it, sits somewhere in the middle of that spectrum because on some level it is still definitely a straightforward movie made with mainstream sensibilities in mind on some level, there was definitely some more thought put into it. The film was directed by Chinonye Chukwu, the director behind the indie film Clemency, who seems to have a knack for making films about women in psychologically taxing situations and for directing internally wounded performances. She’s cast Danielle Deadwyler in the central role of Mamie Till, the mother of Emmett, and it proved to be a pretty smart choice. Deadwyler is not a particularly famous name and that may well have limited the film’s box office somewhat but she was clearly the right person for the role and managed to really nail the interior anguish required and the film also does a good job of showing Emmet Till while he was alive as well. The film isn’t quite able to find the perfect structure for its third act, starting out as a kind of courtroom drama that maybe lacks suspence because the audience knows where it’s going and never quite manages to make her activist arc compelling either, but when it needs to work it works quite well.
***1/2 out of Five
