On Christmas Day, my parents needed something a little more uplifting than Atonement, and for some reason, my mother just wouldn't see Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. My father declared the following film "the perfect movie for Christmas."
The Great Debaters is a love letter to language. Naturally, this Oprah-produced drama about the award-winning 1935 Wiley College debate team features passionate arguments backed by quotes from Thoreau and Gandhi. But it's what Denzel Washington does as both actor and director that helps this true story overcome its formulaic structure to please a linguist.
Actor Denzel plays English professor Melvin Tolson, who preps his pupils to face opponents on and off campus. He references Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett, challenges a student to ponder the irony of "Bethlehem Steel" and makes etymology a thrilling topic. In area barns, “farmer” Tolson exercises his freedom of speech by encouraging sharecroppers to unionize.
The great debaters include 14-year-old D.H. Lawrence-citing James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker); Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), who wants to be the third black female lawyer in Texas; and reckless but literate Henry Lowe (Nate Parker). Robert Eisele's screenplay uses a horrific lynching scene as an obvious method to power the last third of Debaters, although it undeniably shapes the students' attitudes and future activism.
In the director's chair, Washington focuses on worn texts and depicts James' father (an understated Forest Whitaker) lost in a manuscript or hunting a phrase. As the students prepare to debate Harvard (USC in reality), the camera revels in pages turning, papers flipping and pencils scribbling.
The debates could have been longer, and I wish Wiley didn’t always argue the politically correct position. Still, the supremacy of words wins the day for The Great Debaters.
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