The extremity of the experience can feel almost surreal, and Margaret’s monologue doubles of course as a declaration that she has survived and lived to tell this tale alone. As the movie continues, she still struggles to exorcise the demons of grief and guilt, feeling protective panic as a mother because of David’s arrival, so many years after she’d moved and changed her name. But for the length of the monologue, she is able to occupy a space without intrusion or demands, and unburden herself, almost in a moment of impromptu therapy. As “Resurrection” progresses in (cathartically) macabre fashion, it draws on this monologue’s well of emotion.
The Projectionist Chronicles a New Awards Season
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Another genre film, Ti West’s “Pearl,” also uses a marathon monologue to terrific but very different effect. Mia Goth plays the title character, a farm gal who, speaking to a friend, confesses her violent urges — as well as the murders that she has committed. The five-minute-plus piece (which she delivers as if addressing her husband) cracks the movie open in a new way, because as horrifying as what Pearl says, her pain and desperation are also evident. In West’s brightly colored horror tale, all this is more openly played for unhinged humor, and Goth (who has been nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her performance) continues her loopy rampage as Lizzie Borden-meets-Pippi Longstocking.
Genre extremes aside, both monologues involve sharing stories of great violence, and violence is at the heart of Mamie Till-Mobley’s testimony, which breaks the brutally enforced silence of the Jim Crow South. Chinonye Chukwu’s “Till” broaches the murder of Emmett Till and the heroism of his mother, Mamie (Danielle Deadwyler), before, during and after the trial of his killers, which unfolds as a travesty of justice. The courtroom sequence transcends what we’ve been trained to expect, the dramatic reveals, ripostes and objections.
The camera holds steadily on Deadwyler as Mamie is asked about how she identified her son after his body was found. It’s an inherently cruel line of questioning that turns the disfiguring savageness of his murder into a pretext for doubting her. Deadwyler and Chukwu turn the scene into something else again, a demonstration of resolve, righteous anger and love. Mamie holds her ground with dignity and composure, in a rebuke to a court that has just let a sheriff testify that Emmett Till must be alive and hiding somewhere. Her testimony (which incorporates lines from court transcripts) is filmed in an initial profile shot that slowly turns head-on. Deadwyler commands the screen in such a way that her lines feel unified into a single text that demands to be heard.
Mamie’s love for Emmett rises above the corruption of the court, and the camera’s held gaze bears witness to it. Deadwyler closes her eyes as she explains that she could recognize her son’s body even in that terrible state, and the gesture carves out a moment within a moment, capturing the intimacy of maternal love and the unfathomable pain of the experience. Eventually the scene begins cutting back and forth between Mamie and her questioner, but a climactic response jumps out, when she is asked to identify a photo. She responds with matter-of-fact outrage: “This picture is of my son after Mississippi sent him back to Chicago dead.” This is quite literally Mamie speaking truth to power: the bare facts of Emmett’s trip to a segregated state ruled by racist terror and violence. The extended take helps express how Mamie is holding her ground and herself in this hostile space. We can’t look away — and we oughtn’t, as she argued through the public display of her son’s body.
