"Till"

This is the second work on Emmett Till I have seen this year.  The first was a mini-series, called "Women of the Movement".  The mini-series and the film are similar in a lot of ways, although I prefer the mini-series.  Which I'll get to in a moment.  Both focus on Mamie more than her son.  Both portray Emmett as a fourteen-year old who is upbeat, loves music and has that belief of youth that he is invulnerable.  The facts remain the same, so can the story be told differently?  Not much.  The film is more "artsy", the mini-series has more time to go into details.  I appreciated the time taken in the mini-series and learned a lot of things from it which the film had to skip over -- like how hard it was to get Emmett's body out of Mississippi, how things might have been different if the trial had been held in a different county (his body was found in a county next to where he was murdered) and how the NAACP kicked Mrs. Till-Mobley to the curb as soon as her first husband's past was uncovered.  The mini-series is more subtle.  The scene where Mamie sees her dead son's body is similar (and well-documented) but in the mini-series the touch of Mamie's hand on Emmett becomes a mother's touch.  In the film it's just an action.  The long moments in the mini-series allow us to see Mamie's struggle to move from a quiet woman to a champion.  In the film, the long moments are grief porn.  The camera lingers on the face of Danielle Deadwyler, her still figure, while a lonely violin plays random notes.  This happens over and over again, including during her testimony in the trial.  Instead of being a wounded tiger Mamie comes off as a wounded rabbit.  She is teary-eyed from beginning to end.  I don't blame the actor.  This was clearly one of those films created to "make the point" rather than let the story unfold through the actors' work.  Both projects mess with the history but the film does it more.  In the film the wardrobe is a bit inaccurate, Ms. Deadwyler is tall and thin.  In the mini-series, Adrienne Warren provides a shorter, rounder woman and seems to embody the spirit of a complicated woman, not just a grieving mother.  I usually don't prefer mini-series over films, but in this case the mini-series created necessary layers.  Both projects are good, one is just, in my humble opinion, better.  Nonetheless, both have a single point which is well taken.  As young black men in this country succumb to violence every single day, it is critical to remember that every single one of these men had a mother.