Emmett Till is known for his death. A new film about his mother also honors his life

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Earlier this year, Congress passed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, a bill that made lynching a federal hate crime. That milestone comes nearly 70 years after Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago, was murdered by two white men during a trip to Mississippi. Those events are revisited in a new movie, "Till," which focuses on Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, played by Danielle Deadwyler. It opens in theaters this week. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: Ever since it was announced, the movie "Till" has spurred a lot of questions about how it would portray its disturbing real-life events. There have been countless poems, songs, plays and documentaries about Emmett Till, whose 1955 lynching by two white men who were ultimately acquitted provoked a national outcry that helped ignite the American civil rights movement. But the idea of a Hollywood movie on the subject has given some Black critics and audiences pause, especially those who feel that too many films and TV shows focus on Black pain and trauma, even with the best of intentions.

Chinonye Chukwu, the director and co-writer of "Till," is clearly aware of these potential criticisms. She said in interviews that she wanted to avoid exploiting Till's torture and murder and instead shift the perspective to his widowed mother Mamie Till Mobley and her brave pursuit of justice. Mamie is played by Danielle Deadwyler, whose superb performance holds you even through the movie's toughest moments. And "Till" is often piercing to watch, even during the early scenes of Mamie and Emmett together at home in Chicago, which are filled with a sense of foreboding. Emmett, an outgoing, high-spirited 14-year-old played by Jalyn Hall, is about to visit relatives in Mississippi. And Mamie, who grew up down there, warns her son, whom she calls Beau (ph), to be on his guard.

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DANIELLE DEADWYLER: (As Mamie Till-Mobley) All right. Now you're going to miss your train. Beau, when you get down there...

JALYN HALL: (As Emmett Till) Oh, not again, Mama. I've already been to Mississippi.

DEADWYLER: (As Mamie Till-Mobley) Only one time before. And you started a fight with another little boy.

HALL: (As Emmett Till) He was picking on me.

DEADWYLER: (As Mamie Till-Mobley) You're in the right to stand up for yourself. But that's not what I'm talking about. They have a different set of rules for Negroes down there. Are you listening?

HALL: (As Emmett Till) Yes.

DEADWYLER: (As Mamie Till-Mobley) You have to be extra careful with white people. You can't risk looking at them the wrong way.

HALL: (As Emmett Till) I know.

DEADWYLER: (As Mamie Till-Mobley) Beau, be small down there.

CHANG: The movie follows Emmett as he arrives in Money, a small sharecropper town in the Mississippi Delta, and spends a few happy days with his great uncle, great aunt and cousins. But then comes the moment when he enters a grocery store and tries to start a conversation with the white proprietor, Carolyn Bryant, played by Haley Bennett. There's been much dispute over the years about what happened during that fateful interaction. Witnesses have said that Emmett whistled at Bryant. Bryant testified in court that Emmett was verbally and physically aggressive, a claim that she would later admit was a lie.

In the film, Emmett tells Bryant that she looks like a movie star and whistles at her to his cousin's horror. They flee and try to lay low, but a few nights later, Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother show up where Emmett is staying and abduct him at gunpoint. Chukwu doesn't show any of the violence that happens next. All we see is a brief shot of the barn where Emmett is taken, accompanied by the sound of distant screaming.

I have a lot of respect for Chukwu's thoughtfulness here, which is consistent with the intelligence and restraint she displayed in her searing death row drama, "Clemency." But the camera doesn't look away when Mamie goes to identify Emmett's body, which had been found dumped in a river and transported back to Chicago. The movie can't not show us the horror that Mamie sees. It was her decision, after all, to hold an open casket funeral and invite reporters to photograph Emmett's body to show the world what racist violence looked like.

"Till" captures how Mamie arrived at that difficult decision, torn between her instinct to retreat into her pain and her growing realization, aided by members of the NAACP, that Emmett's death might bring about social change. As shattering as Danielle Deadwyler is in her expressions of Mamie's anguish, the most powerful moments are those in which you see her thinking, weighing her responses, and sometimes even suppressing her grief and rage.

At one point, Chukwu simply holds the camera steady on his face as she testifies at trial about the son she loved and lost. It's painful to watch her silently enduring the defense's shameless attempts to discredit her, even as she knows that the all-white jury will let the killers go free. "Till" does hit a few standard inspirational beats, like when Mamie meets the future civil rights leader and martyr Medgar Evers, Nicely played by Tosin Cole, and when she delivers a stirring public speech that marks her arrival as a civil rights activist.

It also has a lot of unexpected warmth and humor, much of it supplied by Whoopi Goldberg in a terrific turn as Mamie's loving mother, Alma. And Chukwu, for all her dramatic restraint, fills Mamie's scenes with her family and friends with striking visual beauty - from the clothes that Mamie wears to the golden sunlight pouring in through her window. At one point, Mamie imagined seeing her son alive and well again, a choice that could have been overly sentimental, but here, feels like a gesture of compassion. The movie's saying, this is how we should remember Emmett Till, not just as he died, but as he lived.

DAVIES: Justin Chang is the film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed the new movie "Till." On Monday's show, we'll speak with Chelsea Manning. She was imprisoned for disclosing military and diplomatic records when she was an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq. She has a new memoir about growing up in Oklahoma, joining the Army, struggling with gender dysphoria, sending documents to WikiLeaks and then going to trial and coping with prison. I hope you can join us.

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DAVIES: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Al Banks. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.