ABC's Women of the Movement struggles to tell the story of Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother

Indiewire

The six-part anthology series "may be marketed as a story told from the perspective of Till’s mother, but she’s ultimately part of an ensemble cast of familiar names and faces, and, at worst, she takes a back seat to the points of view of its male characters, including the reporters and civil rights activists from across the country who descended on the tiny Mississippi town, as well as attorneys on both sides, and the police departments battling over jurisdiction," says Tambay Obenson, adding: "Even if the statement 'Women of the Movement' wants to underline is the critical role Black women played in the African American struggle for civil rights, it doesn’t insert the viewer deep into their lives to know exactly what to feel about the complications of each, beyond exposition. And as an unsparing rebuke to the judicial system’s long history of institutionalized racism, it simply isn’t conspicuous enough. For the series to stand out and live up to its name, it would require a tougher, unrelenting examination of Mamie’s interior life, and/or the lives of the women inspired by her action, against a rigorously-dissected backdrop of a country that’s consistently detrimental to the Black experience. For much of Women of the Movement, the portrait of Mamie is more like one of a psychically imprisoned human being. She’s alone, but with very few moments of actual privacy, solitude, and self-reflection. Her life revolves around her son, and she’s at the mercy of the kindness of strangers, though where their allegiances lie vary. And yet it’s not the study of the psychological effects of the kind of anguish that a story with these accoutrements begs for. It’s not an examination of the isolation and frustrations of a woman prey to political forces beyond her control, and family interests, as well as her attempts at pushing back against the moral inanity that surrounds her. As a result, even though (Marissa Jo) Cerar is credited as creator and showrunner, and Gina Prince-Bythewood as director, the series advances as if it were the product of an assembly line."

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• Women of the Movement doesn't do justice to Mamie Till-Mobley: "With an elite ensemble of Black, female directors and 'women' in its title, the limited series wants to correct male-dominated retellings of Black history and center women in the struggle for Black liberation," says Kyndall Cunningham. "However, the series, based partially on her autobiography, doesn’t seem to know why it’s interested in Till-Mobley as a subject beyond the popular narratives, well-touted information about her activism, and for the sake of honoring her memory. Beyond what her son’s tragedy would come to represent to the world, Till-Mobley’s story is one of deep personal reckoning—which she’s referred to as a 'death of innocence'—about her community and her own existence as a Black person in the United States. It’s a violent and intense emotional trajectory to go from a place of relative comfort and indifference to staring white supremacists in the face. But the series often zooms out from her psyche, instead opting for the more network-television-friendly dramatics of Till’s death and subsequent trial. What would be more fascinating and revelatory as an intimate character study becomes a standard history lesson packaged in a run-of-the-mill crime procedural."
• Women of the Movement works best when it keeps a clear eye on its main concept: "It’s an immediate proof of concept that sets up the importance of Women of the Movement as a potential brand — and when these six episodes keep a clear eye on that concept, the result is a searing perspective on history most viewers will only know in part," says Daniel Fienberg. "When that focus wavers, Women of the Movement is a Wikipedia version of history — still potent, but generic." He adds: "Women of the Movement treats even familiar details with care. Prince-Bythewood and subsequent directors including Tina Mabry and Julie Dash are cautious not to exploit the trauma. They want audiences to see Emmett’s mutilated body, without lingering on or fetishizing it. Instead, the directors prefer to let us experience the pain through the expressive visage of Warren, a Tony winner for her lead performance in the musical Tina and an electric revelation for anybody who hasn’t seen her on Broadway. Warren is equally vivid in her joy and her sorrow, and you never doubt for a second how this woman could have been such a galvanic force and how she parlayed a broken heart into advocacy. More than anything, by positioning the story around Mamie, Women of the Movement treats her as more than an accidental activist. Mamie makes choices, even knowing they could put her life in danger."
• What generally saves Women of the Movement from becoming a rote piece of didactic storytelling is both the empathy of the direction and vulnerability of its main actors: "In his brief screen time, (Cedric) Joe fully embodies a child who has too often been relegated to a symbol status that strips him of his humanity," says Caroline Framke. "As his uncle Mose, who releases Emmett to his eventual murderers under threat of death, Glynn Turman is quietly devastating in every scene he gets. In the rare quiet moments when Mamie gets to take a breath at home, Ray Fisher and Tonya Pinkins turn in memorable performances as her concerned partner and mother, respectively. And of course there’s (Adrienne) Warren, tasked with anchoring the series, who brings Mamie to visceral life even when the script gets necessarily clunky in its attempts to have her tie everything together. As Warren plays it with aching vulnerability, and as history has borne out too many times, Mamie’s victories as a civil rights activist nonetheless drain her, and so many other grieving Black mothers, of their time, energy, and capacity for hope. Warren and Women of the Movement alike are clear-eyed in their portrayals of how a past atrocity unfolded on the most personal levels, and how it continues to echo today. Even when the series hammers the morals of its story home, its refusal to pretend like this country’s made big enough strides since Till’s murder is a credit to its determination to tell the whole truth."
• Despite noble intentions and able talent, Women of the Movement doesn’t pack much of an emotional punch: "Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp’s 2005 doc The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which resulted in the FBI reopening the case and helped introduce the Till tragedy to newer generations, demonstrated the power of a fact-based retelling of history," says Ronda Racha Penrice. "And two years ago, HBO’s fictional horror series Lovecraft Country tackled Till’s murder, even re-enacting the funeral. Instead of concentrating on the details of Till’s lynching, the show leaned into the emotional impact of his death on his friend Diana (played by Jada Harris) — the cousin of series lead Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors). Although Women of the Movement certainly conveys the social and political impact of Till’s lynching, the intimacy of just missing your friend, child, grandchild, nephew doesn’t register. The weight of too much 'telling' and not enough 'showing' frequently sinks Women of the Movement. There are so many missed opportunities. Perhaps showrunner Marissa Jo Cerar, an alum of both Handmaid’s Tale and 13 Reasons Why, revered the history too much to just let it live."
• The twists and turns in the Emmett Till case give the miniseries an unexpected narrative propulsion: "There’s a deep intelligence and care in the choices of which characters and settings to showcase, which may sideline Mamie but offer a panoramic view of the many competing groups and individuals who wanted to spotlight, or bury, Emmett’s story," says Inkoo Kang. "(Also judicious: Cerar’s decisions about how much of the violence and its aftermath to show on camera.) And when the series finally returns to Mamie, it’s sensitive to how her campaign to keep her son’s murder in the headlines renders her a target of accusations of bad parenting, as if any amount of mothering could protect a Black teen from racism’s brutalities."
• Women of the Movement doesn’t succeed in shedding new light on the story, though it is thoughtfully made and devastating, enraging and necessarily difficult viewing: "It also has an unmistakable Hollywood smoothness to it that sometimes feels at odds with the tenor of the story itself," says Nina Metz, adding that "the show is written, filmed and scored in a traditional style of miniseries that hearkens back the ‘70s and ‘80s. I would have been curious to see a stylistically more cinematic — or rawer — approach to the material, but it’s possible that would have been deemed too much of a risk for broadcast television."
• Women of the Movement ultimately does not feel like the most effective version of what it could be: "Women of the Movement has its merits: it recounts an infuriating key moment in US history with a compelling amount of compassion and historical accuracy, and is able to both not gloss over the horror of Emmett Till's fate while avoiding a descent into dehumanizing torture porn," says Ciara Wardlow. "But it ultimately does not feel like the most effective version of what it could be. The most effective version of this series is buried under the weight of an overly generic legal drama with overgrown subplots that steal from the momentum and impact of Mamie’s story instead of supporting it. One particularly baffling storyline about two white reporters—one Southern, one Northern—covering the Emmett Till case is so far removed from everything else that the pair are like an ineffective Greek chorus."
• Costume designer Justine Seymour approached the devastating story through colors that reflect emotion: “I really wanted to be very respectful to the people that had lived this story,” she says. “I wanted to actually re-create the world that (Mamie had) come from.”
• Why Women of the Movement showed Emmett Till’s brutalized body on network TV: Creator Marissa Jo Cerar understood the scene’s importance as she wrote it. “I outlined it — I knew exactly what it was. I knew what I wanted to happen," she tells the Los Angeles Times. Still, Cerar adds, filming the scene was challenging. “I was terrified. If we didn’t get it right, it would suck the whole meaning out of this series," she says. "It is the turning point. It launches the story.” Cerar says avoiding the gruesome sight of Till’s body was not an option. The show used a body cast of Emmett Till actor Cedric Joe for the scene. “We wanted to make it as realistic as we could, following in line with broadcast standards and practices,” says Cerar. “We have to see what Mamie saw. Otherwise, the story makes no sense. Jet printed the photos. The world reacted to the photos. We want our audience to react to what Mamie saw. And we could not see Emmett’s body until Mamie saw it. She is our guide to understand her horror and what she saw, and then her strength.”