Till

I missed out on seeing several movies that I had planned because I was sick last week so I decided on a double feature to make up for it last night.  Even though I knew it would be very difficult for me, I started with Till.  After her 14-year-old son Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall) is brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman named Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett) while visiting his cousins in Mississippi, Mamie Till-Bradley (Danielle Deadwyler) turns her grief into activism.  She insists that Emmett have an open casket at his funeral so that the world can see what was done to him, she travels at great personal risk to testify against the men accused of Emmett's murder, and then devotes her life to the civil rights movement.  I was really worried about how Emmett's murder would be portrayed and I spent much of the first act steeling myself for what I knew was coming.  Thankfully, it is very sensitively done.  Emmett is shown being forcibly taken from his uncle's house and then there is a brief scene where his muted cries are heard from inside a barn but, instead of focusing on the murder, director Chinonye Chukwu focuses on Mamie's response and it is very powerful.  There were several scenes that brought me to tears, including when Mamie meets Emmett's casket at the train station and when she sees his body for the first time, and there were also several scenes that made me very angry, such as when a child fires a cap gun at Mamie on the courthouse steps and then laughs at her and when the verdict is announced.  Deadwyler gives a brilliant performance (she is getting a lot of well-deserved Oscar buzz), especially in the aforementioned scene at the train station and during her testimony, but I was also really impressed with Whoopi Goldberg, who plays Mamie's mother.  This is definitely a movie that is hard to watch but it such an important story that is, sadly, still very relevant today.  I highly recommend it.