The Great Debaters; Film Review

The past week, I went to see The Great Debators with a friend. The opening shot announced that this was indeed a “big” film; the smooth, panoramic shot of the Southern Texas’ forests and mangroves not only set the scene, but spoke volumes about the production values, the expertise, and the money behind the movie. Clearly Oprah Winfrey and Denzel Washington also felt the need for a change from the low budget movies in which black men inevitably end up cavorting around in women’s clothes or fat suits (sometimes both at the same time). Thank God.

James Berardinelli sees the movie as the epic struggle of Wiley College’s talented black debate team to rise up against the racism that infected the 1930s South. The heart of darkness unveiled in The Great Debaters is of course, the lynching scene; as Melvin Tolson drives his team to a competition, they come across a gathering of white rurals congregating around the charred body of a young African American hung on a tree. “Was he a farmer, was he a sharecropper?” wonders one of the debaters later on. “They lynch people in Texas,” the young James Farmer Jr. tells his Harvard audience in the concluding debate. True, the ignorance and brutality of South deserves to be recorded as one of the darker chapters in human history. At a salon I recently attended, we saw printouts of historical lynch scenes where some members of the the white audience congregating around lynchings were actually smiling in glee. Clearly, there is no darkness like the darkness in the heart of man.

But it can also be said that the film preserves the classic cultural binary of the urban and urbane, abolitionist North against the rural, Jim Crow South. Harvard, with its mahogany fittings and black Sanskrit-spouting dorm butlers, is presented in ivy-glossed glory. Tolson evokes the cultural revolution of the Harlem Renaissance, while Henry Lowe visits the swanky jazz clubs of Boston later on. The film makes not even a passing reference to the political, economic and social ghettoization of the African American community in the Northern cities. Its a fact that African Americans refugees of the Great Migration were barred from the trade, educational, and cultural opportunities of the great cities of New York, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Its a testament to their intelligence, ingenuity and creative inspiration that they were able to turn inward and pool their resources to create intelligentsias and cultural meccas that drew the very communities that shunned them. But this fact of metropolitan segregation is real, and a sad precursor to the 1960s-1970s urban planning in New York and other cities that destroyed the black urban middle class.

The narrative structure of the film follows the “ascent pattern” common to sport movies and journey epics: The Mighty Ducks, Pilgrim’s Progress, Remembering the Titans, Glory Road, The Odyssey, Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings, etc. That is, the heroes (and heroine) encounters a series of challenges where they prove their mettle and the sincerity of the purpose, moving towards a final “do or die” contest that tries all that is within them and that will determine their true value. Frodo must confront his inner demons and relinquish the Ring. Odysseus fights the suitors in a battle that tests his stealth, smarts, and self knowledge. Mount Doom and the longed for Ithaca both test the hero’s mettle and confer the ultimate value on him. For Henry Lowe, Samantha Booke, and James Farmer Jr., the momentous place that becomes the “do or die” arbitrer is: Harvard University.

Is there anything wrong with the picture? Nothing, if it’s a question of proving oneself against the best. But something if we consider that we are once again ceding the question of our worth to the system’s value-conferring institutions. We value the author that gets the Pulitzer or the Nobel. We value the educator hailing from Harvard. We lionize the leader sculpted in marble and pedestalized in cultural memory. We don’t do any of the discovering but certainly feel comfortable in joining in the praise. There is a fine line to draw here but it must be drawn: the difference between appreciating the excellence conferred by great institutions like Harvard and the personal and institutional bankruptcy indicated by our [that is, African Americans and Muslims in general] accepting these institutions as the ultimate standard of value. Does anyone felt that The Great Debaters may have inched across the line?

It’s hard to look on the oversights of a film so good, but as humans, we tend to ferret about how much short of perfection we’ve fallen. The actors were superb. It came as a surprise to realize how many talented African American actors there are; its no longer just a few pioneers but a thriving sub-industry. Admittedly, it was sad to think about the lack of good scripts for these actors; mainstream Hollywood apparently is still stuck on the equal opportunity frame of thinking of scrabbling a black side kick to the white hero/ heroine. The stories of the black folk, when given center stage, are dazzling and compelling. Kudos to Oprah and Denzel for scratching at the surface of this potential. (It also makes me wonder about the other stories we’re missing out on: Latin American, Asian, Far Eastern, African, and so on). Denzel is excellent as a director and actor; the film is well put together, transitions smoothly, and is compelling. Plus, he’s 53, but he still steams up retinas with the charisma that set our hearts ablaze from Mississippi Masala onwards. As my friend said, it’s not just about those good looks, but the dignity he carries himself with. Lord indeedy.

Finally, let’s not get carried away with the historical and cultural commentary and miss out on the fact that its about the great debators. These were young, erudite young men and a woman who were, as Tolson says, “making war with words.” Debate is war; you educate yourself, know the terrain, marshal the forces of your knowledge and intelligence, and think up strategies to route your opponents. Just as a general might sense victory from factors such as morale, weather, and intuition, a debater can measures impact on the hearts and minds of his or her audience. Henry Lowe fights with deconstruction and sheer educational literacy; when Samantha Booke takes the stage, she overwhelms with the moral force of her convictions. The debating stage is one of the fairer platforms for a contest. The rules are in place and known to everyone. Opportunity for attack and counterattack is given to all. I loved Samantha and the power of her sympathy with justice. Its clear that when she wins, she wins by morally convincing the audience about the truth of her position. Tolson’s advice to his team, when they venture up to Harvard without him, is “speak the truth.” So, truth is one of the greatest weapons of war? An interesting thought indeed.