Inarguable: Washington's 'Debaters' shine

Forgive yourself for thinking you've seen "The Great Debaters," oh, about three dozen times before: This Denzel Washington-directed drama -- loosely based on the real-life exploits of the 1935 debate team at Wiley College, a historically black college in Marshall, Texas -- falls right in line with any number of recent period pieces, including "Miracle," "Glory Road," "Remember the Titans" and "Invincible." It's yet another tear-jerking melodrama about hard-driving coaches, underdog teams and an American public that was spiritually reawakened by an unlikely triumph.

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Inarguable: "The Great Debaters"

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But the great surprise of this film, written by Robert Eisele and produced in part by Washington and Oprah Winfrey, is that it serves up such a vivid, unnerving portrait of the racial divide in Texas in the early 20th century. The director conjures images that are tough to shake off; images that you'd never expect to see in a feel-good holiday entertainment.

Watch out, particularly, for the scene in which the team, while on its way to a debate another black college, literally drives right into a lynch mob. Washington's refusal to let the audience off the hook -- and his determination to take stock of the many racial atrocities of the era -- lends urgency and force to the drama. We really do get the sense, each time the young debaters take the lectern, that their lives and futures are at stake.

Washington plays Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley with staunchly leftist sympathies (in addition to coaching the debate team, he was trying to help organize a group of crop workers, white and black, in the area). At the start of the film, he's assembling his new team, which includes Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), a brilliant, but hot-tempered young man; Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), a young woman who transferred to Wiley solely for the chance to compete on its nationally renowned debate team; and 14-year-old James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), the precocious son of the college's president, James Farmer (Forest Whitaker).

It doesn't take long before you realize that screenwriter Robert Eisele has taken considerable creative license with the facts of this story.

Whereas most college debate teams wrestle over such wonky topics as land-use rights or income tax, the Wiley gang invariably finds itself defending civil disobedience or arguing against the separate-but-equal clause of the Constitution -- a convenient opportunity for swelling strings in the score (by James Newton Howard and Peter Golub) and for the members of the debate team to deliver sanctimonious speeches about the virtues of liberal enlightenment.

Earnestness has its place, though, especially when the rest of the movie is so absorbing and quietly authoritative. As he did in his underappreciated debut feature, "Antwone Fisher," Washington has the good sense to surround himself with grade-A professionals and then stand back and let them shine.

The three young actors who play the primary debaters are all relative newcomers, but they give relaxed, charismatic performances. The cinematography is by the extraordinary Phillippe Rousselot (an Oscar winner for "A River Runs Through It" who also shot "Antwone Fisher"), and he convincingly brings to life the vast divides of 1930s America. Best of all is the fearless Forest Whitaker, who allows us to understand what it meant to be an educated African-American living in rural Texas during the Depression.

It probably should be noted that "The Great Debaters" slightly overstates the groundbreaking nature of the team's achievements (the screenplay implies that, in 1935, black colleges weren't competing against primarily white colleges in debate tournaments, which isn't true). It should probably also be noted that the Wiley College debate team never actually went to Harvard and competed against that university's team in a debate broadcast on NBC radio. (They finished the season by defeating the University of Southern California in the national championships.)

But by the final 30 minutes, we're so wrapped up in the fates of all of these characters -- including Farmer's wife (played by the marvelous Kimberly Elise), who doesn't necessarily agree with her husband's spare-the-rod, spoil-the-child approach to raising their kids -- that we can hardly begrudge the screenplay a bit of self-aggrandizement or wish-fulfillment. Besides, any movie that sends us home with tears in our eyes must be doing something right.