Denzel Washington, The Great Debaters

by Kathryn Durfee
12/28/2007

I'll take an inspirational sports movie with a side of white guilt, please. Denzel Washington's new film The Great Debaters is a well-acted feel-good movie about Wiley College's 1935 debate team and its rise above racism, love triangles, and politics to achieve victory.

This movie, though mostly fictional, is inspired by the true account of the small debate team led by the great American poet Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington). After a grueling sequence of tryouts, Tolson selects four students to make up his debate team: Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), an intelligent boy who likes a good time, Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams), James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), the team's 14-year-old researcher, and Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), the substitute and the only female debater around. He follows the arduous tryouts with even more testing exercises in order to prepare his team. The team defeats the top African American colleges in the country, rising to notoriety.

The wrench in the story, and the key departure from the sports movie formula, is Tolson's extra-curricular activities. Some nights, clad in overalls and floppy hat, Tolson sneaks into the woods to hold meetings of share croppers whom he is trying to convince to unionize. Seen as a radical, Tolson puts his academic career and his team in danger.

There are other dangers, too. It is 1935, and interracial relations aren't good. The emotional climax of the film is a lynching witnessed by the team while on their way to a tournament. The murdered boy's crime was merely the color of his skin, a lesson these young students would never get from their extensive research. This event shapes their outlook and infuses their arguments with a passion that cannot be found in research.

As a director, Washington does only a mediocre job in constructing this film. Debaters is undeniably true in its representation of the Jim Crow south, but the overall product comes off as contrived, as do all movies about underdog teams that come out on top. This last statement reveals that the team, of course, does triumph against Harvard in the eleventh hour. This is not a spoiler; since when do filmmakers present us with tales of losers?

Debaters is, without a doubt, a Hollywood production. Loosely based on real events, the film takes considerable liberties. For example, the final debate was, in real life, against USC, not Harvard. The change was made simply to emphasize the great progress Wiley College's team made during the year.

Washington infuses his portrayal of Tolson with passion and vigor. When the film started, I figured he would be the African American John Keating (Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society). But his alternate side as a political radical sets him apart from all the inspirational movie teachers that have come before him. I found myself wanting to know more about him, but I suppose the whole point of the film is the kids, etc.

The kids, it must be noted, held their own against Washington. At times, they fell into the melodrama of a Lifetime movie. Acting giant Forest Whitaker also makes an appearance as preacher and professor James Farmer (Junior's father). He plays the spiritual but strict parent well, though it is near impossible to watch him and not remember his turn as the demonic Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.

Debaters is, despite its predictability and formulaic characters, a well-done and inspirational film. Washington's project, produced by Oprah Winfrey, does not shy away from societal issues; the film looks racism in the face and ultimately rises above, making me wonder how many other unsung stories of triumphs have faded into the annals of history.