The Great Debaters: my impressions
by SouthernFriedInfidel | Published on December 30th, 2007, 7:48 pm | Arts
Just went out to see "The Great Debaters" this afternoon. I hadn't seen any reviews or even any trailers. I just thought the title was interesting and I like watching Denzel Washington.While the basic story was entertaining -- that of a debate team from a small black college in Texas carrying through adversity and controversy in 1935 to rise to national prominence -- I spent a lot of the film thinking unrelated thoughts. Like "How many movies about how tough it was for blacks under American Apartheid does this make?" I've lost count. I think that Oprah (who was listed as this film's producer) can assume that everyone gets it. I personally want to say "I'm deeply sorry" to every person that isn't white who has ever experienced the slightest feeling of discomfort while living in the South. I assure you that I have tried all my life to diligently avoid giving the least hint of an impression that I consider myself superior in any way or sense of the word.
OK... that being said, I'd like to carry on with my impressions.
The script was well-crafted, and I thought that the characterization was some of the highest quality that I've seen in a film in a long time. Washington's acting was terrific -- low-key when needed, intense at the right spots. I think this was one of his better performances. The rest of the cast were all believable in their roles, all the way down to the black butler at Harvard and the pig farmers.
I have little knowledge about the minute details of movie making, like cinematography, sound editing and such-like, but I have to say that the impressions that I took away were of a believable, immersive view of east Texas and the way life was during the Great Depression.
My only beef with the film was that the racial tension aspect was troweled on so thickly that I wondered why a black college was allowed to exist in Texas in the first place, or why none of the main characters were lynched. Which explains my second paragraph above. That, and there was a bit of a misstep in the script for the final debate, in which one debater spoke of Hitler in the same way that we do today -- as a byword for evil. Which I have to wonder about considering the time frame of the film, only 2 years after the man became Chancellor.
So overall, I thought the film was entertaining. Had it existed without so much baggage of being another in a long LONG line of films about Apartheid, I would say it was an important film. As it stands, I'd give it a B or a B+