The Great Debaters

By Jenny
Fri, Dec 21, 2007 @ 12:12 PM PST

Congratulations to "The Great Debaters", it is not just a congratulations from personal level from me, also the film has been selected by Roger Ebert as the 9th greatest film of 2007. Would this movie theme excite anyone? I would say, yes. This movie seems really motivational- and makes me want to debate. Debate what, you may ask... Anything, anything at all! That's the spirit of debating.

Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington) ? professor and debate team coach at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas formed the debating team with the core of which consists of James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), the brilliant 14-year-old son of the stern college president (Forest Whitaker, no real life relation), the tempestuous Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) and Samantha (Jurnee Smollett), the first female member. All the actors did a wonderful job in their parts. You really get lost and forget that it is a movie as they work very hard and they become that role. The picture explores Tolson's training of them, which includes some regimental exercises in which he drills his philosophy into their heads and lots of practicing of proper technique, and it breezes through their many competitions throughout the South. The specter of racism lingers over all, in the shame the younger James feels when he watches his father humiliated by two rubes, the persistent threat of lynching and the refusal of white colleges to take an all black squad seriously.

Tailor-made for maximum inspirational, historical and educational impact, "The Great Debaters" shines a bright spotlight on a remarkable example of black achievement long forgotten in the sorry history of the Jim Crow South. It was extrmely exciting to see how the debate team from tiny, all-black Wiley College in East Texas rose during the Depression to take on all comers, concluding with the vaunted Harvard squad. The lynching aside, the dynamics of relations between the races, as well as the abject poverty of the region and the difficulty of life in general, are superficially treated; the illiterate, unwashed masses on both sides of the color divide are largely invisible here, as is any sense of the larger community, the presence of the church in black life and that of institutionalized bigotry with teeth.

The debate scenes overall are invigorating and refreshing in the way they show students mentally engaged in the specifics and nuances, and not just the emotions, of current events, and able to articulate them within a rigorous format. More than that, as a christian, I am personally inspired greatly by the screen writer's engagement with enemts of God. The scene of the first training session of this unique debating team, which was next to the lake with Mr. Tolson on the boat pretty much reminded me the scene when Jesus called his first disciples on the boat with crowds gathered at the sea shore. However, the context was changed into confessing that God is the judge, and our opponent ? Satan or Harvard or whoever in front of you ? doesn't exist. This was such a brilliant encouragement and confessoin, and I wish that beside the racial issue, this godly characteristic will also prevail in many viewers' hearts.

Fri, Dec 21, 2007 @ 12:12 PM