20 February 2009
The Great Debaters (2007)
I was only half watching this on a ski trip, so I may not be fully cognizant of the particulars of the screenplay, which was far better than it deserved to be. It’s the same zero-to-hero type story about nurturing young minds and creating passionate individuals set in a different context. But here are a couple thoughts: how modern was Melvin Tolson’s attitude when it came to his Communism? “My politics are my business.” Hello? You and your students were almost lynched driving to a debate. How naive is this guy? Does he really think the fact that he’s organizing a union for poor whites and blacks that this will shift the opinion of the majority? Even if he didn’t hide it, it’s the 30s! (Maybe I missed something?) And how did the movie reconcile the fact that these kids were not debaters but performers, given Tolson wrote all their arguments? He says “It’s the way it’s done, the way it’s always done” to them in the classroom during a practice, but Harvard certainly doesn’t seem to be under that impression. And for that matter, that they always seem to draw the moral high ground side of the debate? It’s better than your average sports movie and it follows the same arc, with a lot of better little things rooting around for the viewer’s attention within that familiarity (Tolson became the poet laureate of Liberia in 1947, for example).