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The Great Debaters (2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition) Review

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Before I saw the final scene, I was getting ready to give this movie a three star rating. But this movie was so close to greatness that I didn’t want to have to give it only three stars.

My only complaint with the movie is that not enough was shown about how the debaters prepared themselves to become top notch debaters. Only the superficialities were covered. The harder aspects, the long hours of research and the knowledge of logic and persuasion were barely even alluded too. What did Denzel Washington’s character (the debating coach) study that prepared him to be such an excellent debater? The classics, I’m sure. The ancient Greeks, and the European and American scholars who came after them. Why was this glossed over? This movie had an excellent opportunity to teach as well as to inspire and entertain.

In Stand and Deliver, a big part of the movie was the endless drilling of the students. We got a sense of how one goes about becoming a superior student in math. Practice, practice, and more practice. But in this movie that aspect was rushed through and almost glossed over. We don’t know how the students acquired such a sophisticated understanding of argumentation. We don’t know anything about what they had to go through to prepare for a debate. The basics of good debate should have been explained. But they weren’t. So we are left imagining that the most important part of debate is being *in* the right. But that’s not enough. One must be able to *argue* the right and support one’s argument. That’s what debate is all about.

I hope Denzel Washington filmed some extra footage of the coach and the students as they were preparing for debates. If so, then I think that footage should be restored in a director’s cut version. To leave that part of the story out in the name of keeping the film short is a horrendous decision in a film like this. But I have no doubt that it was a producer who made the decision, not Washington. That’s so typical in Hollywood. Many movies are just shy of greatness due to an over-zealous producer leaving his paw prints all over the movie. Hollywood knows nothing if not how to screw up a good thing.

How can we believe the characters are good debaters? We must take the word of the writers and director. They don’t give us any evidence of the characters starting as inexperienced debaters then growing to be master debaters. Obviously it happened, because it’s history. But that is a part of history, a part of the story, they didn’t show us. I simply can’t fathom why they would leave out such a vital aspect of the story. It would be like watching The Right Stuff and leaving out all of the training the astronauts went through. It makes no sense.

The Great Debaters (2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition) Overview

Two-time Academy Award® winner Denzel Washington (American Gangster) directs and stars with Academy Award® winner Forest Whitaker (Last King of Scotland) in this important and deeply inspiring page from the not-so-distant past (Richard Roeper, At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper). Inspired by a true story, Washington shines as a brilliant but politically radical debate team coach who uses the power of words to transform a group of underdog African American college students into an historical powerhouse that took on the Harvard elite. DVD Special Features:

Disc One: Deleted Scenes
The Great Debaters: An Historical Perspective;That’s What My Baby Likes Music Video. My Soul Is A Witness; Music Video. Theatrical Trailer
Sneak Peeks: Grace is Gone, Cassandra’s Dream, I’m Not There, Hunting Party
Disc Two: The Great Debaters: A Heritage Of Music
Scoring The Great Debaters With James Newton Howard & Peter Golub
Learning The Art: Our Young Actors Go To Debate Camp
Forest Whitaker On Becoming James Farmer, Sr.
A New Generation Of Actors
The 1930’s Wardrobe Of Sharen Davis
The Production Design Of David J. Bomba
The Poetry Of Melvin B. Tolson

The Great Debaters (2-Disc Special Collector’s Edition) Specifications

Inspired by real events, the fascinating The Great Debaters reveals one of the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement in its story of Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington in a captivating performance) and his champion 1935 debate club from the all-African-American Wiley College in Texas. Tolson, a Wiley professor, labor organizer, modernist poet, and much else, runs a rigorous debate program at the school, selecting four students as his team in ’35, among them the future founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker). Washington, who directed The Great Debaters from a script by Robert Eisele (The Dale Earnhardt Story), anchors the story with the team’s measurable progress, but the film is also about the state of race relations in America at the height of the Great Depression. With lynchings of black men and women a common form of entertainment and black subjugation for many rural whites, the idea of talented and highly intelligent African-American young people learning to think on their feet during debates would seem almost a hopeless endeavor. But that’s not the way Tolson sees it, as his students serve themselves and the cause of racial equality in America with energetic arguments in favor of progressive government and non-violence as a viable social movement. There are some startling moments in this movie, particularly the sight of a man found lynched and burned to death, and an extraordinary moment in which we see black sharecroppers and white farmers engaged with Tolson in arguments about unionizing together. Forest Whitaker is outstanding as Farmer’s emotionally-reserved father, also a Wiley professor. This is the kind of film where one hopes two great actors such as the elder Whitaker and Washington will have a scene together, and when it comes it’s as powerful as one might hope. –Tom Keogh

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