The Great Debaters Blu-ray Review
Resolved: that 'The Great Debaters' is an unusually uplifting and moving film.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 15, 2011
Resolved: that Oprah Winfrey may yet save us from ourselves.
Okay, okay, she's easy to make fun of. The yo-yoing weight. The bombastic voice. The softball questions she lobs at guests she loves. And yet in spite of it all, Oprah remains a force of nature, a woman who has single-handedly reshaped daytime television in her own image and is now starting to do the same across the entire spectra of niche cable television with her Oprah Winfrey Network. Oprah came along in the wake of
Donahue, when salacious and confrontational interactions were the bulk of daytime talk shows, and she toed that line quite successfully for a few years, until her own conscience got the better of her. Both on her own show and in her burgeoning production empire, Oprah started to reach out to the better angels of mankind's makeup, attempting at least to bring a little genuine thought and kindness into the proceedings. This is not to say that salaciousness and confrontation don't at least sometimes rule the day, for they most certainly do, either on Oprah's own show or her broadcast progeny like
Dr. Phil. But Oprah has also brought a new spirit to contemporary entertainment. Some may pooh-pooh it, likening it to the Hallmark Channel, or indeed even a Hallmark card, pat little statements of the goodness of Man wrapped in an attractive package. But at least some of the time, there's some depth and nuance in Oprah's offerings, and that's certainly the case with the beautifully made, if sometimes "too good to be true"
The Great Debaters, a moving (some would argue tear jerking) film based on true events about a debating team from historically African American Wiley College which managed against all odds to take home a national championship in the 1930's, back when Jim Crow's ugly segregationist head was still reared prominently over large portions of the American southland.
Resolved: that Denzel Washington is a surprisingly fine director.
The annals of Hollywood are littered with the detritus of actors' egos, actors who "only wanted to direct." Occasionally, though, a performer manages to stuff his
hubris into something approaching humility and is able to assume directorial reigns with surprising flair and competence. Washington's initial foray,
Antwone Fisher, was a decent enough film which offered some compelling ideas and excellent performances. But the five years between that film and
The Great Debaters must have seen some rather unexpected maturation on the part of Washington in his guise as filmmaker, for
The Great Debaters is infinitely more heartfelt and accomplished than Washington's first directorial effort. There's probably little doubt that the true events which fostered the film inspired Washington to a greater degree than did the true events that sparked
Antwone Fisher. For as Oprah herself avers in an excellent supplemental documentary, when the Wiley debating team won,
all African Americans won. Though little known even to this day, the Wiley team's accomplishments stand out as a singular achievement at a defining moment in African American history. Blacks had finally started to pick themselves up by their bootstraps from the shackles of slavery, becoming better and better educated, but the societal forces, symbolized by Jim Crow era maneuverings, still kept them firmly "in their place." The Civil Rights era was still more than a decade in the future, and the nascent steps that people like the Wiley debating team took were already paving the way for greater and greater access to the American Dream.
Washington recreates mid-1930's Texas with accuracy and flair. As James Farmer, Jr. (portrayed in the film by Denzel Whitaker—named for Washington) has described, Wiley's home town of Marshall, Texas, was the last place to surrender during the Civil War, and that redneck (for wont of a better term) sensibility was still alive, kicking, and, yes, lynching during the era portrayed in
The Great Debaters. But Washington doesn't sensationalize the
zeitgeist needlessly, despite some close calls with lynch mobs and other, omnipresent signs of institutionally approved racism (pay attention to the many "Whites only" or "Colored entrance" signs which pop up in the background). Most importantly, Washington helms one of the finest pieces of ensemble acting, especially of an almost exclusively African American cast, since the film which first put Oprah herself on the acting map,
The Color Purple. With veterans like Washington portraying iconic professor and poet Melvin B. Tolson and Forest Whitaker essaying James Farmer, Sr., Wiley's chaplain,
The Great Debaters also features brilliant work from a new generation of African American actors, including Denzel Whitaker in a beautifully crafted performance as Farmer, Jr.
Resolved: that sometimes it's O.K. to simply enjoy a feel-good film.
Some people may have passing qualms about how pat
The Great Debaters is. It's strangely akin to every "come from behind" sports film you've ever seen, only built around rhetoric instead of pigskin. And Washington and screenwriter Robert Eisele might be faulted for putting some historical blinders on, making our heroes more iconic than perhaps they were, and painting white America as an evil behemoth when perhaps it wasn't quite so simple. But there's simply no denying the emotional pull which
The Great Debaters is able to generate, especially by the time the final (fictionalized) match between Wiley and Harvard takes place. Yes, Eisele shorthands things by giving us types in the guise of characters, but when he deals with real life people like James Farmer, Jr. and Melvin Tolson, he seems to get at some authentic feeling characterizations which help to bring life and intimacy to this story which could have otherwise simply seemed too symbolic for its own good.
The deep integrity and soul of the African American people as a whole is brilliantly depicted in
The Great Debaters, and the amazing thing is, as is revealed rather astonishingly in the supplements, Eisele really didn't exaggerate or fictionalize (despite the "fake" showdown with Harvard) all that much in crafting his screenplay. Tolson, like Oprah herself, was a force of nature to be reckoned with, and he fashioned his own rhetorical hurricane which swept through the south and, later, far reaches of America, proving that race is no barrier to disciplined thought and speech.
The Great Debaters, in the best debating sense, takes the affirmative and runs with it, and the result is an unusually gratifying and emotionally fulfilling film experience.
