Social filmmaking at its most effective, Keith Beauchamp's documentary THE UNTOLD STORY OF EMMETT LOUIS TILL reconstructs the infamously brutal murder of the eponymous 14-year-old African-American boy, which helped to marshal the American Civil Rights Movement. When the mischievous Till, on a visit to relatives in Mississippi, dared to whistle at a local white woman, it was only a matter of hours before he met with inhuman torture and a watery deathbed at the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. Though authorities tried to shush up the atrocious crime as quickly as possible, hurrying Till's mutilated body into a coffin with the intent of burying it immediately, Till's remarkably strong mother, Mamie Till Mobley, insisted on displaying the hideous face of racism for all the world to see. This horrific image became an iconic symbol of one of the most shameful eras in American history.
Told chronologically, the film unravels its narrative thread through eyewitness accounts and archival footage. Though it is short and economical, a heart beats through every frame--the heart of Emmett's remarkable and magnetic mother, who tells the story of her son's murder and her own mobilization of the tragedy in the service of the Civil Rights Movement. Delving into the trial and its deplorable outcome--the exoneration of the two admitted killers was shocking in the very fact that it shocked no one at all--Beauchamp opens up a web of unanswered questions about the case. The product of more than a decade of research, Beauchamp's film managed to get the 50-year-old murder case reopened.
