The Great Debaters: Movie Review (2007)

Making their point

Directed by Denzel Washington, written by Robert Eisele, 127 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Denzel Washington movie, "The Great Debaters," is about finding the courage to raise your voice in the face of great hatred, opposition and fear.

It comes by coincidence in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who faced death daily because she used her voice to fight oppression, and because she was willing to pay the price for doing so. If her death is a reminder of how high that price can be, then the bellows of rage and grief that have followed it are a reminder of how critical her voice was.

The tragedy of Bhutto’s death connects "The Great Debaters" to the present and gives it an immediacy and a power it otherwise might have lacked. By standing up and speaking for so many Pakistanis, surely Bhutto’s quest to shake her country into change will inspire others to come forward and raise their own voices, as well.

The real-life students whose lives are explored in "Debaters" were similarly inspired.

The film fictionalizes the true story about the all-black Wiley College debate team which, in 1935 Marshall, Texas, did what nobody had done before it. In the segregated Jim Crow South, where lynching was common, they found power in words and their own voices. Frustrated by the oppression restricting them, they decided to come forward and reach white America by debating at mostly white schools.

Their coach was Melvin B. Tolson (Washington), the well-known poet and professor who also was an activist. Not so secretly and under the cover of night, he held meetings to discuss the unionization of black and white sharecroppers, which at the time was enough to leave many in town whispering that Tolson was a Communist.

In the movie, that accusation causes him trouble, but he still sidesteps the rumors to remain steadfast in his beliefs. He is forming two revolutions at once — one by his students’ debates, which culminate at Harvard, and the other by the sharecroppers’ unionization. Each makes for a complex man driven to push people to a higher plane.

Mostly, though, the movie is about Tolson’s students, who are portrayed by such gifted young actors (Nate Parker, Jermaine Williams, Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker), that they infuse the film with the weight it needed to balance what’s otherwise a formulaic, predictable tale (Robert Eisele wrote the script, Oprah Winfrey produced).

All are excellent, particularly Whitaker as James Farmer Jr., the young man who pines for Smollett’s Samantha, learns plenty about life from his father (Forest Whitaker), and who eventually grew up to become founder of the Congress of Racial Equality. Much like the fearless Bhutto, Farmer’s voice, honed by a teacher, went on to touch many.

Grade: B+