With excellent cinematography, a wonderful soundtrack, masterful acting and a compelling, emotional story, Till is a movie for all time.
It paints a sickening picture of societal injustice that sadly is on the rise in America. Check out this official trailer if you haven’t heard of it yet. If you have, go see it at your local cinema (...they need to put more bodies in the seats). If you have friends who haven’t voted yet, recommend it to them.
Rather than analyze the movie, I’ll just insert a couple of quotes from Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother.
Those pictures of your son in the magazine changed people’s lives.
Two months ago, I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the negroes in the south, I said ‘that’s their business, not mine’. Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.
We don’t come here with hatred in our hearts. We have to be taught to feel that way. We have to want to be that way, to please the people who teach us to want to be like them. Strange, to think that people might learn to hate as a way of getting some approval, some acceptance, some love.
Every election denier on the ballot (and every one filling out a ballot) next week is guilty of injustice by their lies about stolen elections and their subsequent efforts to disenfranchise urban voters.
Can’t you just imagine the spinal contortions Tucker Carlson would have to employ to discredit and downplay the significance of this movie’s theme of injustice — for a 2022 audience? He would try to be like the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men who shouted “You can’t handle the truth”.