Jalyn Hall and Danielle Deadwyler in Till (Lynsey Weatherspoon/Orion Pictures)

Don’t be scared away from seeing Till, a dramatization of the brutal 1955 death of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Chicago black teenager who was abducted and murdered in rural Mississippi. That advice came from Whoopi Goldberg, one of the film’s stars and producers, at the press conference proceeding its world premiere at the New York Film Festival.

Potential viewers who are trepidatious about the violent subject matter or the 130-minute running time need not worry. This restrained biopic is one of the most thoughtful to come out of Hollywood in recent years. Although the lynching lies at the center of the narrative, the racial violence never overwhelms the material. Instead, the script emphasizes Mamie Till-Mobley’s response to her son’s death. From the beginning, her perspective informs the entire movie.

A widowed single mother, Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler) works as a secretary, and the sole Black employee, at the Air Force’s Chicago office. The opening scenes are key to director Chinonye Chukwu’s (Clemency) goal of centering the story line on Mamie: they build upon the bond between mother and son. As depicted here, Emmett (Jalyn Hall) is an average, middle-class, good-natured teen with airplane-patterned wallpaper in his bedroom and a photo of movie star Hedy Lamarr in his wallet. An apprehensive Mamie allows her only child to travel South to visit his cousins for a few weeks, fearing how he will fare living under Jim Crow, no matter how temporary. She advises him to “be small down there,” not to draw attention to himself. Her mother, Alma Carthan (a very good Goldberg), on the other hand, waves off her daughter’s concerns— it’ll be good for the teen to spend time with his relatives.

Chukwu said she “didn’t want to show violence inflicted upon black bodies.” Instead, she aimed to portray the joy of everyday Black life, even under such dire circumstances. Unlike so many filmmakers who often match serious subject matter with self-consciously dark cinematography, the director and her team have come up with a luminous depiction of African American life in Chicago and the Mississippi civil rights community, in which Medgar Evers (Tosin Cole) plays a pivotal role. The overall impression is hope, not oppression; only occasionally does Abel Korzeniowski’s musical score take on a swelling, inspirational tone. Given the brutal nature of the crime, the film’s overall effect is subdued.

Nevertheless, the screenplay by Keith Beauchamp, Michael Reilly, and Chukwu highlights racial injustices, from a Chicago department store clerk steering Mamie toward the store’s basement and away from the White shoppers, to the venomous hatred Emmett, and later his mother, encounter in Mississippi. The script gives viewers enough information regarding his murder, which is not seen on screen, though briefly heard in the distance. Although some critics may say this portrait tones down the barbarity that was inflicted upon the teenager, they would also have to acknowledge that the movie does not objectify his death nor exploit it for shock value.

Among Mamie’s pivotal decisions that brought Emmett’s lynching to worldwide attention was to have an open casket at his funeral and to allow the photograph of her son’s mutilated body to be published as an exclusive for a Jet Magazine cover story just weeks after the killing. She continued with her activism in the civil rights movement as a spokesperson for NAACP and c0-wrote Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (2003).

If it’s true that actors become more compelling as they hold back tears, then Deadwyler’s performance as a bereaved mother fighting to maintain her composure and dignity despite the racist attacks against her and her son’s memory is riveting. Her attendance at the trial of the two White men charged with Emmett’s murder, a particularly arduous sequence, is layered with nuanced degrees of fear, anger, and grief. Though Deadwyler already has a long resume (Station Eleven, The Watchmen), this role is a star-making turn.

Co-screenwriter Keith Beauchamp spent 29 years researching the history and ramifications of Emmett’s murder and was a close friend to Mamie. In 2005, he made the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which featured her extensively. It offers a different, more factual context behind the Emmett Till story yet complements Chukwu’s feature film. Both narratives convey much of the same information through divergent approaches and prisms.