Cynical Cinema

There are many, many movies just like The Great Debaters, which comes out May 13th from Alliance Films. Movies that deal with race relations in the Jim Crow south. Movies that show kids in college achieving a greater understanding of the world through a special teacher and through competition. Many of which have starred Denzel Washington. All of which means The Great Debaters is nothing new. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t excellent. What sets this film apart is the crafting of the movie, courtesy of Washington, who directs, and the performances that hold it together, also courtesy of Washington. He is terrific as the college professor who molds a team of Africa-American debaters into the most potent orators in the college world.

Also terrific is Forrest Whitaker, who now has to merit some consideration as one of the finest actors of our time. He plays a preacher at the same college as Washington, a fine orator himself and a renowned scholar. He doesn’t quite understand, the way Washington does, how best to harness his intellectual powers to effect true change, but he grows over the course of the film. But the character who does the most growing is his son, who is played by the aptly-named Denzel Whitaker. As the youngest member of the Wiley College debate team, Whitaker is both the emotional centre of the movie and the one character whose growth most mirrors the story arc. His performance as 14-year-old James Farmer Jr. May well be the best in the film.

Rounding out the terrific cast are Jurnee Smollett and Nate Parker, as the eventual other two members of the debate team. Parker plays a rebellious student, who is brilliant but tortured. Smollett is a driven, intelligent woman, who aspires to become only the third black female lawyer in the United States. Their story, (and romance) is incidental to the film, but it works. Denzel Washington’s story seems incidental as well, at first. When he isn’t working at the college, he is dressing up as a farmer and holding clandestine meetings in barns, attempting to organize the Southern Tenant Farmers Union. This leads to him being branded a communist, and there is a backlash against him that comes from both the white establishment and his African-American colleagues. In the end, this is not simply an incidental story line, it is essential to the full fleshing out of the story.

The fact that this film is based on a true story might be the most remarkable thing about it. These people did exist, they did do this remarkable thing, and who knows - had we been there at that time, in 1936, it may well have been as powerful and inspirational as the movie itself. Now, I do have a quibble or two. If this were 1936, using a reference to Hitler to win a debate wouldn’t exactly have the gravity that it does now. In fact, it might have been a rather weak argument in 1936. Like making a Gearge-Bush-is-awful argument in August of 2001. Maybe you can see something terrible coming, but it sure isn’t there yet. And also, the top-ranked Harvard debate team seems to have had their lines dumbed down a little. They don’t make enough sense and they aren’t good enough points for such a highly-touted debating team. That being said, however, I would have really liked to see a little more of the debates themselves. They are all so compelling and so interesting that I could have handled another hour of movie if it was all debating.

As Wiley College mows down their opponents in Texas, and takes on the best Negro colleges in the States, a final showdown is set when Harvard agrees to meet the team and debate against them. Harvard is, of course, the perennial powerhouse team, the best in the country, and they are willing to meet this remarkable Negro team in an historic debate. Of course, this is the big, climactic, and inspirational finale of the film, and it’s fairly routine in the way it ties everything together, but it is set up and delivered so well that it doesn’t feel like a cliche or like the obvious ending, it just feels great. And so does the rest of The Great Debaters.