“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Desmond Tutu
“Handle with Care” could have been on the cover of the script for Till, but it wasn’t necessary because director Chinonye Chukwu, following her Sundance-winning Clemency, crafts her gentle but powerful depiction of 14-year-old Emmett Till’s Mississippi lynching in 1955 and the subsequent trial of two white men. This docudrama not only does justice to the tragedy, but it also shows the death’s influence on the 1967 Civil Rights Act.
Mamie Till-Mobley (Danielle Deadwyler in a sure-to-be-Oscar nominated performance) fights to have her son’s brutalized body shown to the public, and it was shown, and like the movie itself, unforgettable. The film shoots this struggle in bright color as if to proclaim the horror vividly to the world. While strong black men recoiled from facing down white supremacists, Mamie never backed down in her attempt to bring justice for her son and expose the bigotry that exists even today.
While sometimes the music is heavy-handed and the courtroom drama veers to conventionality, never does the script waver from an even-keeled tempo, that like the Civil Rights Movement itself edges inexorably to success, the only possible outcome when justice is on its side. Although the material may be too emotionally sensitive for some, most will appreciate the unsentimental, unsensational, respectful delivery.
Emmett’s famously bloated and disfigured face haunted us almost 70 years ago from the pages of Jet magazine, and it is no less disturbing now in Till. It’s just that we have matured enough to face down realism for the greater good of facing down racism.
One of the year’s best movies.
“We do the best we can.” Mamie
Till
Director: Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency)
Screenplay: Michael Reilly, et al.
Cast: Danielle Deadwyler (The Harder They Fall)
Run Time: 2h 10m
Rating: PG 13
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
