MOTHER KNOWS BEST
TILL Chinonye Chukwu takes an unflinching look at the child murder that changed America.
When coming into the historical biopic Till, the assumption is that the ‘Till’ in question is Emmett, America’s most famous victim of lynching. In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till left his home in Chicago to visit family in Mississippi. A few days later, a gang led by Carol Bryant and her husband Rob abducted the child in the middle of the night, tortured and murdered him before mutilating his body and throwing it in the river.
But the director centres her film on Emmett’s mother, Mamie, who insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see what had happened to her son. “I didn’t know a ton about Mamie as a person before signing on to make this film,” Chukwu admits, “but just learning her navigations of the personal versus the public versus the private really helped to make her more than this strong Black woman archetype. This is someone who had to actively suppress layers upon layers of emotions in very complicated ways.”
Making Till Mamie’s story still meant confronting what happened to Emmett. For Chukwu, there were strict boundaries as to what the film should depict, saying firmly, “there was no need to show physical violence inflicted on Black bodies.” She wanted audiences to realise that “there’s so much more to Mamie’s journey than that. This story is also about joy, community, hope and possibility.”
But Chukwu ultimately had to respect Mamie’s wishes of having the world see Emmett’s nearun-recognisable, brutalised body.
For the director, the pain of viewing the consequences of violence versus violence being enacted are very different prospects. ”I don’t think it’s equally difficult. It’s two different things. It also deals with intention and how you show it. There’s no way that you can tell this story without honouring Mamie’s decision for the world to see what happened to her son, and it’s all a matter of how you show it. Is it a voyeuristic way or is it a humanising way? I leaned into the humanity of it.”
She had a similarly human approach to welfare on set, emphasising “keeping the lines of communication between us” in the most challenging scenes, and having a therapist on set for additional support. Danielle Deadwyler’s Mamie is strikingly styled, both her home and the all-Black town of Mount Bayou recreated with elegant attention to detail. For Chukwu that beauty was key. “I wanted a bright, vibrant, rich colour palette to reflect the beauty and the richness of Black people, of Black culture, of Black communities. To reflect that even in spite of the most horrific, painful experiences you can’t take our light, you can’t take our joy away.”
TILL OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 6 JANUARY.
‘There was no need to show physical violence inflicted on Black bodies’ CHINONYE CHUKWU