Review: The Great Debaters
Penguin January 24th, 2008
Rating: 3.5/4 stars
The Great Debaters is about a debate team striving for gold in the Jim Crow south.
I’m not a racist person, and being a minority definitely helps me empathize about being discriminated against. But there’s no way that I could say I understood what it was like to be black and living in the south during the Jim Crow laws. There’s this scene early on when Dr. James Farmer, Sr. (Forest Whitaker), a preacher and dean of a black college, is driving with his family, hits and kills a pig. The pig farmer comes out with his buddy and the tension just skyrockets. You don’t know anything about these two people, but you know where they are and the time they’re in and that’s enough. The threat is compounded when one of the white men draws a gun. Anything can happen and you realize that this was the terror that these people were living under. And farmer, educated, respected, powerful (in his context) becomes nothing when come face to face with the white man.
Who would’ve thought a movie about debaters would be this interesting? Even the debating parts are interesting. But Denzel Washington, in his directorial debut, does the right thing and doesn’t focus too much on the debate aspects. The third act when they focus more on the debates, is probably the weakest point. Yes, he ties in a lot of stuff that happened before, but the focus is now on the debate. In a similar fashion to sports movies, you know who’s going to win. You want them to win!
There’s tremendous depth to The Great Debaters. It’s a shame that the title isn’t more interesting because there’s a beautiful gem under that plain title.
-Penguin
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