Well, Denzel Washington sure does.
The actor-director brings the energy and rhythms of a sports flick to a little-known bit of American history in his deeply enjoyable film “The Great Debaters.”
***1/2 RATING | Uplifting Drama
From the opening credits carried forth on a vibrant rendition of “My Soul Is a Witness,” the second-time director takes comforting genre conventions and uses them to tell a culturally potent tale.
“Debate is blood sport,” Washington’s character, professor Melvin B. Tolson, tells the young men — and one woman — who hope to make his squad. “It’s combat.”
In 1935, Tolson, an acclaimed poet, and his Wiley College students faced the University of Southern California’s debate team in the national championships.
Written for the screen by Robert Eisele, the film changes the opponent from USC to Harvard. And most of the characters — with the exception of Tolson, college professor James Farmer and son James Jr. — are composites of the verbal battlers who made the small African-American college in Marshall, Texas, so competitive in the 1930s.
Forest Whitaker and the charmingly named Denzel Whitaker (no relation) play the formidable father and his prodigy son. Farmer Jr. went on in real life to found the Congress of Racial Equality and was one of the leaders of the Freedom Rides. (A number of Wiley’s debaters participated in the civil rights movement.)
But the James Farmer Jr. of this movie is just an impossibly smart kid out to please a larger-than-life patriarch — and woo a girl.
The actors who play the debaters are a likable bunch.
Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) is Tolson’s best and brightest rebel. Jurnee Smollett plays Samantha Booke, the first woman to make the team (she, too, is an invention, though modeled on Henrietta Bell, Class of ’34).
Samantha does double duty as an object of a lot of affection and a feisty pre-feminist.
Watching Parker hold his own in contentious scenes with Washington’s professor is a pleasure trumped only by the clash of titans Washington and Whitaker, which takes place when Farmer Sr. questions Tolson about his tenant farmer organizing.
Each Oscar winner brings reined-in physical volatility to his performances. Whitaker reminds audiences yet again that he’s not the teddy bear we might mistake him for.
This posture of containment is particularly telling when Farmer Sr. must kowtow to two pig farmers on a country road, his family watching.
We know Farmer Sr.’s challenge, even if his son thinks less of him.
The movie is rife with adolescent aches and attractions. But “The Great Debaters” is a coming-of-age saga that doesn’t evade the American age in which it takes place.
For instance, the filmmakers do a compelling job of teasing the psychological responses of three young competitors who were having the time of their lives when they came upon the “strange fruit” that so affected Billie Holiday.
Of course, Washington and Oprah Winfrey, who produced the film, have a gift for making the African- American experience into the American experience. And the movie pushes past ugliness toward triumph.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com. Also on blogs.denverpostcom/madmoviegoer
“The Great Debaters”
PG-13 for depiction of strong thematic material, including violence and disturbing images, and for language and brief sexuality. 2 hours, 3 minutes. Directed by Denzel Washington. Written by Robert Eisele. Photography by Philippe Rousselot. Starring Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett, Jermaine Williams, Denzel Whitaker, Gina Ravera, Kimberly Elise and John Heard. Opens today at area theaters.
