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The Great Debaters
Director: Denzel Washington
Producers: Oprah Winfrey, Joe Roth, Bob Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein
Writers: Jeffrey Porro, Robert Eisele
Starring: Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker, Denzel Whitaker, Jurnee Smollett
Music: James Newton Howard
Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot
Editor: Hughes Winborne
Release date: December 25, 2007
Running time: 126 min
Country: United States
Language: English
Budget: $15 million
Gross revenue: $30,236,407
The Great Debaters is a 2007 American drama film. Denzel Washington, the director of the film who plays the role of Melvin Tolson, Wiley College English professor, has won the Academy Award twice. Also, Forest Whitaker is the other African-American playing in this film who has won the Academy Award for best actor in The Last King of Scotland. The film is based on a true story taken from the article written about the Wiley College debate team by Tony Scherman for the 1997 spring issue of American Legacy. Wiley College is a black college situated in Marshall, Texas. Melvin Tolson, English professor of the college, inspired by the Harlem Renaissance and his clandestine work as a union organizer, coaches a debate team in the college. The story takes place in 1935 when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a great fear for blacks.
There are four people in the college team including, Samantha Booke, the first female in the college debate team and James Farmer, a precocious 14 year-old boy. The team, trained well by Tolson, defeats most of the other debate teams from different colleges and enters into the first debate between U.S students from white colleges and black colleges and the winner is Wiley. Having gained a lot of victories, the team is eventually invited to face Harvard University champions. This final debate is another victory for the Wiley College debate team.
The film beautifully portrays the Jim Crow south of America during the 1930s when the blacks were suffering so much from racism and lynch mobs. There are some moving scenes in the movie like the humiliation of a black doctor, James's father, in front of his family over a dead pig or the scene where a black is lynched by a white mob who set his body afire. Although some people may think that these scenes take the focus off of the debating at times, I think they are essential to the film since they help us understand the characters better and the feelings that go into their debate arguments. Black life is all about segregation and discrimination and the audience have to see that black achievement and victory are not easily obtained.
The Great Debaters shows how the black realized that education was the key to their success. Mr. Farmer, James's father, is the first African-American who manages to get a doctorate degree in Texas. He very much wants his son to follow his path and urges him to study hard. Also this emphasis on education and knowledge is seen in the scenes where Mr. Tolson is giving instructions to the debate team. He tells them that the whites have tried to keep their body, and kill their mind. They want to keep them psychologically dependent so that they can never improve and Tolson tells them that his is "trying to help save their righteous mind."
The issues selected for debating are interesting. Long scenes are allotted to the young debaters expounding on school integration, civil disobedience and other big Issues. Although the speeches are prepared by Tolson, at the end we see the success of the team when they are left on their own to prepare themselves for the debate with Harvard.
Tolson's being endangered by working as a covert labor organizer for local farmers and the team being threatened by lynch mobs remind the audience of the volatile politics of the time, when a black man could be attacked for simply owning a suit and a car. This gives the movie a nice political undertone. The climactic debate at the end of the movie is between the Wiley College and Harvard University. However, based on the real story it should be between Wiley and the University of Southern California. This is done deliberately in order to highlight the great achievement of Wiley debate team.
Overall, I think The Great Debaters is an honest look at the 1930s Jim Crow south. It enjoys believable characters with solid acting and invokes emotional reactions in viewers. You can share the feelings of fear, shame, disgust, pride and happiness with the black people especially the debate team. Also this film shows us the great efforts of people who paved the way for civil-rights movement to happen. Tolson, the strong debating teacher, teaches the team members how to stand up for their rights and at the end of the film we learn that James becomes one of the leaders of the civil-rights movement and founds the Congress of Racial Equality. Finally I think that this movie is emotional, educational, and uplifting and arouses our feelings of sympathy for the black people.
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