Deep Dives Into the Meaning of Family
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
Till (Chinonye Chukwu) rated PG-13 131 min.
Opening Chatter: As the 2022 ongoing-negotiations between COVID-19 and me continue regarding my presence in movie theaters, the virus wins again as infections in my San Francisco area are back on the rapid rise (predicted after so many indoor Thanksgiving gatherings), but fortunately I found some quite intriguing options on streaming (good ones next week also) to share with you, including (hopefully) an Oscar-contender in Till, about the brutal murder of a young Black teen in Mississippi in 1955 but mostly focused on how his grieving mother demanded the world see his ravaged body, calling attention to U.S. Southern intolerance toward African-Americans, helping inspire the soon-to-be-unleashed Civil Rights movement, with (sadly) needed continuance into our era. Along with this somewhat-fictionalized drama based solidly in the history of the events, I’ll also offer an actual documentary called “Sr.” about extremely-independent-filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. (died last year), initiated by his famous-actor-son, R.D. Jr. (of Iron Man fame), a sincere tribute yet one in which the Downeys invest themselves fully in aspects of the shooting and editing of the film. Given the content of these offerings I’ve not indicated any spoilers because you need to read the entirety on both, please. Also, here are links for the schedule of the cable network, Turner Classic Movies, which has a wide selection of older films with no commercial interruptions and the JustWatch site which also offers you a wide selection of options for streaming rental or purchase. If you'd just want to see what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, go here.
Here’s the trailer for Till:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
What Happens: August, 1955, Chicago: 14-year-old African-American Emmett Till (Jalyn Hall)—often called Bo or BoBo by his family—decides he wants to go to Mississippi to visit relatives there, a journey his mother, Mamie Till (Danielle Deadwyler)—later Till-Mobley, after a third marriage—supports not at all, knowing the blatant racism Blacks face in the Deep South, possibly Mississippi the worst of all. But confident young Emmett persists in his quest so Mamie tries to give him a sense of how to conduct himself, with her advice to “Be small down there.” Emmett, accompanied by his cousin, Wheeler Parker (Marc Collins), takes the train to what would quickly prove to be an ominous destination because while staying with his great-uncle Rev. Mose Wright (John Douglas Thompson), his wife Elizabeth (Keisha Tillis), and 12-year-old-cousin Simeon Wright (can’t find him in a cast list), Emmett goes one day with a couple of his cousins in the little town of Money to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market for candy (Black sharecroppers’ kids were frequent customers of the store); after the others got what they wanted, Emmett went in by himself under the serious stare of co-owner, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant (Haley Bennett). After Emmett gets his small purchase he tries to complement Carolyn by telling her she looks like a movie star; she’s not impressed, but as he leaves he gives her a quick wolf-whistle which immediately causes his cousins to race away with him as fast as possible as Carolyn goes for a gun, with no mention to Mose about the incident which the boys assume has blown over, because by a couple of days later they’ve still heard nothing more about it.
The main reason for the lack of response seems to be Carolyn’s husband, Roy Bryant (Sean Michael Weber), has been out of town; when he returns, Carolyn expanded the encounter by telling Roy Emmett had grabbed her, made some sort of lecherous remarks. Soon, Roy’s figured out where Emmett lives so he and his half-brother, J.W. Milam (Eric Whitten), show up at night at Mose’s home, demanding the boy be turned over to them, with no plea for mercy or even an offer of cash useful in changing their minds. Later we learn 18-year-old Willie Reed (Darian Rolle) was walking by a shed where he heard the sounds of torture and screams of the victim, but when J.W. came outside and saw him, Willie denied hearing anything so he was not detained. Back in Chicago, Mamie’s concerned she hasn’t heard from Emmett for a couple of days (even considered going to MS herself to bring her boy home), so she confides her fears to her mother, Alma Carthan (Whoopie Goldberg), fears confirmed when Elizabeth calls to say Emmett's abducted, yet nothing’s been heard about him.
Then it gets worse when his body’s found in the Tallahatchie River, badly beaten and disfigured, shot in the head, weighted down with a 75-pound-fan from a cotton gin around his neck. Despite her immediate, intense grief Mamie responds quickly to the news the local sheriff down South wants to immediately bury Emmett’s body (thereby preventing the world from learning what happened to him), but she works with the NAACP’s Southern officer, Medgar Evers (Tosin Cole)—himself a victim of deadly violence in 1963—and its Chicago representative, Rayfield Mooty (Kevin Carroll), to demand the body be sent back by rail to her; when the train arrives in Chicago she wants the coffin opened (here’s a brief video [4:30] about that, with footage and photos of actual Mamie at the time, along with some testimony from a few of Emmett’s-now-much-older-cousins) when, to her horror, she sees the brutal mutilation that was done to her son. With consistent support from her later-to-be-new-husband, Gene Mobley (Sean Patrick Thomas), she becomes defiant, insisting that at the funeral the casket remain open so everyone can see the unjustified horror her son endured at his death in a culture where people are grotesquely-defiled by word and deed simply because of skin color and heritage. (Response to this vicious cruelty helped push forward the soon-to-emerge-start-of-the-Civil Rights movement which would finally begin to bring about some aspects of racial equality [in the law, if not in the hearts of unrepentant bigots—sadly, including some in my own family] as aspects of segregation and lynching-brutality were finally made illegal from the 1960s on into out present day).
Mamie then has to face an equally-challenging-situation when she agrees to go to Mississippi to verify the body in the casket is Emmett because officials where the murder occurred are trying to confuse the issue as an attempt to help protect Roy and J.W. who’ve been indicted for murder. She makes the difficult trip, testifies this mangled body is indeed her son, hears testimony from Mose and Willie verifying what happened to Emmett, yet the all-male, all-White jury brought back a quick acquittal, leading Roy and J.W. in 1956 to take some cash ($4,000) from Look magazine in which they admit to the murder of young Till, knowing confidently they can’t be tried again due to double-jeopardy protection. Despite all of this injustice, then and over the decades since, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was finally approved by Congress (although 3 House Republicans still voted "no" after Sen. Rand Paul delayed it for 2 years), then signed into law in March, 2022 by President Biden.
So What? I have to think Till was consciously-designed as a PG-13 film to help make it available to as wide an audience as possible given how the horrid reality it depicts needs to be seen by teens-to-adults (well, maybe not in Florida where recent law helps protect “sensitive” White children from feeling the shame of what their ancestors [and relatives?] and other racists from not only the Deep South but also the rest of our conflicted country have been up to from eons ago into the present), so we’re not forced to witness any of the terrible torture inflicted upon young Emmett, nor even dwell on the mutilated body that served as the centerpiece of his funeral. Not that racism in this film is confined to the South, however, as an early scene shows Mamie hassled by a floorwalker in a Chicago department store as if she might be a shoplifter rather than a customer. Emmett’s story is a horrible one, just as Mamie’s is an education in determination that her son’s’ undeserved murder should not go unnoticed, that the grotesque humiliation visited upon him should be seen by all to reveal to the entire world what atrocious crimes were being enforced upon Blacks in the South with little hope for justice against the perpetrators. Deadwyler should be in serious consideration for Oscar’s Best Actress (depending on what else may be released in the few remaining weeks of 2022) as she personifies the need for justice in the face of atrocities (a terrible situation we’re still struggling with due to the far-too-frequent-slaughter of innocent people in the U.S. from automatic-gunfire of late, along with those war crimes being daily perpetuated against civilians in Ukraine from cruel Russian missile-attacks to satisfy the twisted-empire-dreams of egomaniac-dictator-Vladimir Putin).
The film as a whole might be a serious Best Picture Oscar contender as well, so we’ll just have to see how it fares when awards nominations take place in the not-too-distant-future. In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about the whole Emmett Till story you could refer to this 2004 CBS 60 Minutes account (25:44 [ads interrupt at 4:00, 7:50, 12:19, 20:54]) which summarizes the situation of Till’s death, along with evidence of 14 others who seem to have been involved in the crime (including some Black men, who were likely coerced into cooperating); it also notes how Carolyn Bryant later recanted (not in court) much of her testimony about her encounter with Emmett Till, how she might have been involved enough in his murder to have been charged but never had to face that burden, as well as this video of locations related to Till's murder and the resulting trial (24:49 [ads interrupt at 10:00, 17:05]), shot years after the fact so some of the sites are now severely-deteriorated. Many note that Till’s ghastly-death isn’t recalled/taught about nearly enough in our schools, so, if you need a cluster of facts about it, these sources certainly help, as does this one.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Till’s been in theaters since October 14, 2022 with its widest presence at 2,136 domestic venues (127 now), but, sadly, hasn’t made much of an impact at the box-office taking in only $8.9 million in receipts (no worldwide figures), so if you want to see it (I sincerely hope that you do), your best bet is likely via streaming where you can access it for a $19.99 rental at Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, other platforms (see specifics on JustWatch). The CCAL actively joins with me in promoting this film, with the Rotten Tomatoes responses at an astounding 98% positive while the Metacritic folks give it a resounding (for them) 79% average score (more details on these critics-accumulations-sites for anything I review can always be found farther below in the Related Links section of each Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark posting on this blog). Given its content, this is a difficult film to watch regarding what happens for no acceptable reason to an innocent adolescent, but it also provides an inspiring story of how his mother refused to allow the brutal murder of her child to simply be ignored, forgotten as she pushed the horrible image of his tortured body into social awareness, giving a concrete reality to the horrors going on in the American South at that time, forcing a complacent society to acknowledge how legitimate citizens were being persecuting simply for existing, an engrained-racism-crime based on inhumane-attitudes we’re still struggling to banish from our collective understanding of who/what we are as a society. I’ll close this out, as usual, with a Musical Metaphor to offer a last, aural comment on the subject at hand, this time a fairly obvious choice of Bob Dylan’s “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” which was never on one of Bob’s mainstream albums but appears on the 1972 Broadside Ballads, Vol. 6: Broadside Reunion, taken from a 1962 radio show along with his commentary at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=RVKTx9YlKls; there’s also a bootleg version you might find at various locations but definitely on the 2010 The Bootleg Series Vol. 9 – The Whitmark Demos: 1962-1964 at https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0vClQa1Hw, where it’s called “The Death of Emmett Till”; not a pleasant experience to relive, even in lyrical fashion, but sung in a straightforward, damning manner.
“Sr.” (Chris Smith) rated R 90 min.
This documentary is a son’s (noted actor Robert Downey Jr.) tribute to his now-deceased father (filmmaker Robert Downey Sr.) who died in 2021after a long career of making low-budget, anti-Establishment films that generally aren’t too well-known, except possibly the satire of advertising and racism, Putney Swope; the Downeys frequently insert themselves into this film’s content/procedures.
Here’s the trailer:
This B&W documentary (except for clips from movies in color, in honor of the main subject’s oft-used-cinematics), initiated by famed-actor Robert Downey Jr. about his father, a prolific-but-largely-unknown-filmmaker, the “Sr.” of the title (although he was born Robert Elias Jr., changed his surname to Downey in reference to his stepfather), who, along with his son, is a prominent presence in this doc, even to the point of either of them telling the director along the way to reshoot something along with part of what we see re-edited by Downey Sr. Clearly Sr. is an affable subject (kinda reminds me of Christopher Walken) with a son who deeply cared for him despite major bumps along the way between the two, with this film as a eulogy to a man who died of Parkinson’s disease in July 2021 at age 85. Along the way we get commentary from Hollywood heavyweights such as Paul Thomas Anderson, Alan Arkin, Norman Lear, and Sean Hayes plus direct footage of the Downeys in conversation with Sr.’s third wife, Rosemary Rogers, and old footage of his first wife, Elsie Ford, who was often in his early, low-budget works as were his kids with Downey Jr. making his debut at age 5 in Chafed Elbows (1966). While Sr. either directed or otherwise worked on dozens of movies from 1953 to 2011, I’ll admit the only ones I’ve seen (except when he acted in Boogie Nights [Anderson, 1997] and Magnolia [Anderson, 1999]) are the hilarious satire Putney Swope (1969) and the very strange (seeming satire on Christianity) Greaser's Palace (1972), both of them with long clips here.
Other works of his we see some reference to include Up the Academy (1980)—misfits at a military school—and Hugo Pool (1997)—about a pool cleaner in L.A. The CCAL’s quite enamored with “Sr.” as the RT reviews are, again, 98% positive while the MC average score is 78%, another quite-reasonably-high for them. It did have a minor theatrical release on November 18, 2022, but it’s a Netflix product so they give no info on how their movies do in theaters (usually there for a limited time just to qualify for awards consideration before going to Netflix streaming which has been the situation with “Sr.” since December 2, 2022). I found it to be a pleasant, sincere tribute to a man not known much outside of Hollywood insiders (not a lot of them either) with warmth aplenty from Downey Jr. and others who testified on Dad’s behalf, but, beyond that genuine level of sincerity, I (hard-hearted-bastard that I am) wasn’t overly moved by it, just glad to get more background on a guy who showed me a couple of films well-worth remembering. So, to see it you have to be a Netflix streamer, but at least there’s no additional charge beyond your monthly level of dues ($9.99-$19.99).
As for a Musical Metaphor, I had a lengthy-self-dialogue about something I think fits the attitude that Downey Sr. strived to identify with his work; however, a word in the title of this song and its repetition in the chorus include something I have no business even saying. (Starts with “n”; yeah, that word! Especially given the context of this posting regarding the shameful-content of Till.) So, I’ll give you some options of exploring it for yourself should you choose to, fully forewarned. The tune I have in mind feels like a reasonable companion to Putney Swope, although you’ve got to understand what’s in that film as a bitter satire on both commercialism and racism in U.S. society for this song to be seen as created in the same vein. What I’m talking about is from an Off-Broadway play, National Lampoon: Lemmings, which I saw in Greenwich Village way back when I lived in NYC in 1973 (without knowing what would become of some of the cast in later years I was first exposed to: John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest); it’s a parody of the 1969 Woodstock Art and Music Festival (here called “Woodshuck: Three Days of Peace, Love and Death”) where the audience and performers have come to mindlessly kill themselves with digs at the actual festival’s structure (as seen in the marvelous documentary of that event, Woodstock [Michael Wadleigh, 1970]) and specific idolized pop musicians of the time such as Bob Dylan; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; and Joan Baez.
With Baez, her impersonator (Rhonda Coullet) sings a caustic attack on White liberal smugness (“righting grievous wrongs by singing tedious songs”) about supporting the Black Panthers in Oakland while the singer’s comfortable “just across the Bay” in wealthy Marin County (in the process noting the untrue stereotype of Panther-initiated-violence); when the title is put into print it’s often transformed to “Pull the Trigroes, Negroes,” so I think you can get a sense of what it really says. Now, if you want to know more about … Lemmings, go to this site, which summarizes the structure of the play with Belushi as the M.C. Then, if you really want to hear that song (and others) you can watch a recording of a condensed version of ... Lemmings (55:06), commissioned by HBO but never cablecast by them, with the song in question at 36:16-39:12 (followed by Belushi’s parody of Joe Cocker), though the video quality’s horrible, the sound’s so low it’s hard to hear even at maximum volume (maybe that’s to my benefit, given the nature of what she’s singing). Well, anyway, while I think Downey Sr. would have appreciated the whole … Lemmings concept (yet, even though I found it hilarious beyond reproach at the time, straining to hear it all [not quite, this is a less-than-full-version] again, it didn’t grab me like it did then, but, to paraphrase Dylan [ruining his irony in the process], “I was so much younger then, I’m older than that now”), I’ll make another Metaphor choice.
The one I’ve chosen also seems to me to be in the realm of Downey Sr.’s tastes, The Beatles’ “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (released as a stand-alone hit single in 1969; now on their 2000 album, 1, of all their U.K. and U.S. #1’s on the pop charts) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-1OgNq BkVE (a true Lennon-McCartney product as George Harrison and Ringo Starr were otherwise occupied when John was anxious to get this recorded so he and Paul through multi-tracking provide all of the vocals and instrumentation). This song’s not nearly as scandalous as some of what you’d find in … Lemmings, but it does address hypocrisy in the media (“The newspaper said, ‘She’s gone to his head / They look just like two gurus in drag' […] The men from the press said, ‘We wish you success / It’s good to have the both of you back' ”) and Lennon once again drawing a connection between himself and Jesus (“Chris, you know it ain’t easy / You know how hard it can be / The way things are going / They’re gonna crucify me”) despite the enflamed controversy on that topic back in 1966. You can get edgier material in … Lemmings if you care to pursue it, but to really get in the flow of Downey Sr. I recommend viewings of Putney Swope (stream for free if you’re a Peacock subscriber) and/or Greaser’s Palace (also on Peacock [and fuboTV, which I know next-to-nothing about]) or probably others of his output which I haven’t seen yet. Or, if you’d just like to learn more about Mr. Sr. there are many details at this site (just don’t go there or watch ”Sr.” if you want to find out more about the off-screen life of Iron Man because R.D. Jr. keeps the focus on Dad, not himself).
That’s all for my critical commentary this week (which usually reminds me of some parting lyrics from Pink Floyd’s "Time": “The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say,” or maybe R.E.M. knows me even better [from "Losing My Religion"]: “Oh no, I’ve said too much / I haven’t said enough”), but whether you agree with any of that stuff or not I’ll offer you one more opportunity to be in unity with an attitude that would benefit all of us, James Taylor’s "Shower the People" (on his 1976 In the Pocket album), because we should “Shower the people you love with love / Show them the way that you feel / Things are gonna be much better/ If you only will.” We’re now sailing through divisive times; it could be a smoother ride if we’d only help each other a bit more.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: In quick fashion, here are extra items for you: (1) 2022 in Fifty Films (from IMDb); (2) What's new on Netflix in December 2022; (3) What's new on Amazon Prime Video in December 2022; (4) What's new on Hulu in December 2022; (5) What's new on Disney+ in December 2022; and (6) What's new on HBO/HBO Max in December 2022.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
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Here’s more information about Till:
https://www.unitedartistsreleasing.com/till/ (click on the 3 little lines in the upper left to get more info at this site)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ak9INVTxM (7:44 interview with director [and co-screenwriter] Chinonye Chukwu and actors Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Sean Patrick Thomas, Whoppi Goldberg [also a producer of this film])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/till
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/till
Here’s more information about “Sr.”:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81644889
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiONGlsBckk (17:36 interview with director Chris Smith [also co-cinematographer] and producers Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, Kevin Ford [also co-cinematographer, co-editor]—sound quality not good; I suggest using the Closed Captions [CC] button to help [ads interrupt at 1:00, 6:15])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sr
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/sr
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