Reaction of the movie entitled "THE GREAT DEBATER"

Setting

          In Texas in 1935, Wiley College put together a debate team lead by Melvin Tolson. Tolson was a respected professor, but he had Communist political leanings which scared a lot of people. And this being the South in the early part of the 20th century, racism was still rampant. Tolson was determined to put together a terrific debate team; one that could barnstorm the country, including white Universities and showcase the black talent. After finding a foursome to lead the charge, Tolson has to lead them not only to victory in debate, but to victory over the abject racism that surrounds them. Each of the kids has to grow up much faster than they should have and it is only through a strong moral compass, and friendship, that they can survive and go on to lead fruitful lives.

Characters in the movie “The Great Debater”

• Denzel Washington as Melvin B. Tolson
• Forest Whitaker as James L. Farmer, Sr.
• Denzel Whitaker as James L. Farmer, Jr.
• Nate Parker as Henry Lowe
• Jurnee Smollett as Samantha Booke
• Jermaine Williams as Hamilton Burgess
• Gina Ravera as Ruth Tolson
• John Heard as Sheriff Dozier
• Kimberly Elise as Pearl Farmer
• Jackson Walker as Pig farmer
• Justice Leak as Harland Osbourne
• Robert X. Golphin as Dunbar Reed

Plot

There are four people in the college team including, Samantha Booke, the first female in the college debate team and James Farmer, a precocious 14 year-old boy. The team, trained well by Tolson, defeats most of the other debate teams from different colleges and enters into the first debate between U.S students from white colleges and black colleges and the winner is Wiley. Having gained a lot of victories, the team is eventually invited to face Harvard University champions. This final debate is another victory for the Wiley College debate team.

The film beautifully portrays the Jim Crow south of America during the 1930s when the blacks were suffering so much from racism and lynch mobs. There are some moving scenes in the movie like the humiliation of a black doctor, James's father, in front of his family over a dead pig or the scene where a black is lynched by a white mob who set his body afire. Although some people may think that these scenes take the focus off of the debating at times, I think they are essential to the film since they help us understand the characters better and the feelings that go into their debate arguments. Black life is all about segregation and discrimination and the audience have to see that black achievement and victory are not easily obtained.

The Great Debaters shows how the black realized that education was the key to their success. Mr. Farmer, James's father, is the first African-American who manages to get a doctorate degree in Texas. He very much wants his son to follow his path and urges him to study hard. Also this emphasis on education and knowledge is seen in the scenes where Mr. Tolson is giving instructions to the debate team. He tells them that the whites have tried to keep their body, and kill their mind. They want to keep them psychologically dependent so that they can never improve and Tolson tells them that his is "trying to help save their righteous mind."

The issues selected for debating are interesting. Long scenes are allotted to the young debaters expounding on school integration, civil disobedience and other big Issues. Although the speeches are prepared by Tolson, at the end we see the success of the team when they are left on their own to prepare themselves for the debate with Harvard.

Tolson's being endangered by working as a covert labor organizer for local farmers and the team being threatened by lynch mobs remind the audience of the volatile politics of the time, when a black man could be attacked for simply owning a suit and a car. This gives the movie a nice political undertone. The climactic debate at the end of the movie is between the Wiley College and Harvard University. However, based on the real story it should be between Wiley and the University of Southern California. This is done deliberately in order to highlight the great achievement of Wiley debate team.

           Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson at historically black Wiley College to place his team on equal footing with whites in the American South during the 1930s, when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a pervasive fear for blacks. In the movie, the Wiley team eventually succeeds to the point where they are able to debate Harvard University.

          The movie also explores the social constructs in Texas during the Great Depression including not only the day-to-day insults and slights African Americans endured, but also a lynching. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr., who, at 14 years old, was on Wiley's debate team after completing high school (and who later went on to co-found C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality). Another character depicted on the team, Samantha Booke, is based on the real individual Henrietta Bell Wells, the only female member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College who participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the United States. Wells also happened to be a major African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress.

          The key line of dialogue, used several times, is a famous paraphrase of Augustine of Hippo: "An unjust law is no law at all."

          Another major line, repeated in slightly different versions according to context, concerns doing what you "have to do" in order that we "can do" what we "want to do." In all instances, these vital lines are spoken by the James L. Farmer Sr. and James L. Farmer, Jr. characters.

          The film depicts the Wiley Debate team beating Harvard College in the 1930s. This meeting actually never occurred. The debate most likely similar to the one depicted by the movie was the match up between Wiley and the University of Southern California, who at the time were the reigning debating champions. Wiley College did indeed win this match up. According to Robert Eisele: "In that era, there was much at stake when a black college debated any white school, particularly one with the stature of Harvard. We used Harvard to demonstrate the heights they achieved."

         

^Theme

          I think the main theme of the movie is racism between black and white  that is the root of the movie and the power of being heard and the great debate between the blacks and the whites if you read at the end of the movie how all of them went on to become something great i think the main objective is being heard on a different level.

Point of View

           Having the opportunity to see the love and loss, fear and shame, recklessness and determination, brought the characters to life, and in turn gave the film a spirit that transcended time and allowed me to feel like a part of the movie after all.

            In the movie, I can say that it is really educational because you can highly get a moral lesson in it. It is not just for leisure time as you watch it but it has full of insights and you can really poured out all what is in your deepest and inner self.

            I actually don’t understand fully the movie from the very beginning of it but as I keep on watching it, that’s the time that I have a little idea. Though some of their words are not familiar but still it captures my heart.

            The most striking part of the movie for me is when James Farmer Jr. spoke about how the Negro people discriminated by the white one. As he said that “What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung, without trial, in a dark forest filled with fog? Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who were we to just lie there and do nothing? No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing -- just left us wondering why. My opponent says, "Nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral." But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow South, not when Negroes are denied housing, turned away from schools, hospitals -- and not when we are lynched Saint Augustine said, "An unjust law is no law at all," which means I have a right, even a duty, to resist -- with violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

          That speech of James made me cry though I’m not a Negro because I feel what he feels. He really try to fight for his right that Negro and White American are equal in right, intellect, determination and passion.

            The movie is not really about how this team defeats the national champions. It is more about how its members, its coach, its school and community believe that an education is their best way out of the morass of racism and discrimination. They would find it unthinkable that decades in the future, serious black students would be criticized by jealous contemporaries for "acting white." They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all this most dramatically in their debating.

            In that movie it is recommendable to watch not only for the adult as well as the younger one because it has really a moral lesson.