In 1955, Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American from Chicago who traveled to Money, MS, to visit his relatives. Till came home several months later in a box; Till had supposedly whistled at a white woman, and 14 white men, angered by the young man's perceived arrogance, beat him senseless, shot him to death, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighing it down with an engine from a cotton gin. Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, was a fearless woman determined to see that
justice was done (she had an open casket at Emmett's funeral and allowed Jet magazine to publish a photo of his badly mutilated body so others could see the full extent of the crime), but convicting white men on charges of lynching a black teenager in the Deep South in the 1950s was all but impossible, and the two charged with Emmett's death, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were found not guilty by a jury who deliberated for so short a period they stopped for a cold drink to stretch the wait to an hour. Only a few months later, Bryant and Milam admitted they had committed the crime to a reporter from Look magazine, knowing they were protected from further prosecution under double jeopardy statutes. The other 12 men involved in the crime were not charged. Almost 50 years later, filmmaker Keith Beauchamp traveled to Mississippi to investigate the surviving characters in this heinous crime, and The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till combines newsreel footage shot during the investigation of the murder in 1955 with present-day interviews, including Till's cousins, who watched helplessly as he was dragged away by an angry mob; Till's uncle, who identified the guilty men in court; friends and co-workers of the men who committed the crimes (five of whom were still alive when the film was completed), and Mamie Till. In 2005, in part because of evidence uncovered by the filmmakers, the Emmett Till case was reopened in Mississippi. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Beauchamp, who worked on his film for nine years, dutifully reinterviews the surviving witnesses, and more effectively than any previous documentary or return look at the case, re-creates the atmosphere of a 1950s Mississippi.
This well-focused, short (75 minute) film will be an eye opener for those who didn't live through the era. For those who did, it will be all too familiar.
Untold Story is a documentary of compassion and urgency, a film that cries out, as virtually every film and story on this subject does, for justice, something that didn't happen in 1950s Mississippi.
You leave the theater feeling moved by a mother's courage, sickened by the crime and a little frustrated, wondering if this unquiet moment in our history will ever rest easy.
Beauchamp expertly excerpts long stretches from the extensive television coverage of the 1955 events, juxtaposing them with present-day interviews with the people who lived though these traumatic happenings.
Features some sweet moments of reflection by the late Mamie Till during which she wistfully reminisces about the intelligent, curious and animated son taken away from her so brutally and senselessly.
The film is only 70 minutes long, but it is nearly impossible to sit through, not only because of the lingering image at its center of Emmett Till's battered body but because of the visceral sense of outrage it can't help but provoke in you.
Beauchamp reaches this point without exploitation or cheap foreshadowing; there are no dramatic music stings underlying the outwardly innocuous biography before it methodically descends into true American tragedy.
The story has been told often in film and literature, but in The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till ... director Keith Beauchamp takes a rewarding approach.
"The Untold Story of Emmitt Louis Till" is a documentary about 14-year old Emmitt Louis Till, who was tortured and lynched while on vacation with relatives in Mississippi in 1955. This and the failure to convict the killers in a courtroom were one of the main sparks of the Civil Rights Movement. This documentary
really does not provide any new information and simply relies on talking heads and archival material.(One of the interviews is with Till's mother who provides the emotional core of the movie.) The most informative parts involve Till's funeral in Chicago and the preparations for that. There is a very odd coda, though. The main point of this documentary is that there are few things more powerful than a mother's grief. "Darwin's Nightmare" is a powerful documentary about the thoroughly catastrophic ecosystem of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, a country on the edge of famine as it is. Some years before, Nile Perch were introduced into the lake which not only killed off all the other fish in the lake but also cannibalize themselves. Humans are affected because if they do not have one of the relative handful of jobs involved with the catching and processing of the fish(which are all shipped off to Europe without anything beneficial in return), then they must turn to prostitution, find some other way to survive or starve. But even for the people who do work, life can be risky - HIV/AIDS is rampant, fishing is itself dangerous and the local airport's primitive conditions make things a little risky trying to take off and land. The movie interviews people involved like factory managers, airport security, Russian pilots, a prositute, a minister and a local artist.(No outside experts are interviewed but we can see for ourselves that something is seriously wrong here.) My only complaint is that none of the people lucky enough to work in the factory are interviewed to get a sense of how their lives are. This is an excellent documentary about neo-colonialist attitudes that allow for people to make a buck at the expense of other people they have no interest in helping.
August 28, 2005
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
Can't believe this was only a few decades ago. A good doc about injustice and racism.
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