2 Oscar winners share big scene

The debate team takes on the arguments that make
America a better place to live.

By ROGER MOORE

ORLANDO SENTINEL

One of the great movie-going pleasures of 2007 can be found in a single scene in the earnest, uplifting historical drama, “The Great Debaters.” Denzel Washington, one of the premiere leading men of today, and Forest Whitaker, character actor extraordinaire, finally go toe-to-toe in a big movie moment.

It’s a disagreement between colleagues, two professors at tiny, all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. They argue. They smile. But you would swear, watching the two Oscar winners closely, that they get a little carried away with playing opposite each other. And realizing that, they let themselves be tickled over the whole idea of meeting their acting match.

It’s a magical moment in “Debaters,” a workmanlike civil-rights-history film clad in sports-drama clothes. Well-acted, smartly directed by Denzel Washington, it’s inspiring in all the right and righteous and predictable ways.

The “sport” here is college debate, and in the 1930s, nobody took that more seriously than Wiley College. Washington plays the team coach, Melvin Tolson, one of those teachers who strolls into the classroom, climbs up on his desk and inspires. He recites poetry from memory.

“I am the darker brother,” he thunders, quoting Langston Hughes, and the kids swell up with pride. He will preach self-esteem. He will train warriors for the civil rights struggle in a segregated America. And he’ll do this with his formidable debate team.

Whitaker is Dr. Farmer, theologian, preacher, also inspiring, charging the students at this teacher’s college with leading “the way out of ignorance, out of darkness.”

In the 1935 Jim Crow/lynch-happy South, Wiley College is a veritable monastery where the intellectual seeds will be planted and tended for a harvest of “equal justice for all.”

School is also “the only place where you can read all day, except for prison,” which is why Henry Lowe (Nate Parker, very good) is there. He’s a rebel, a womanizing, blues-listening liquor-drinker who doesn’t quite fit in at this Methodist school. But he is the heart of the debate team.

Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett) knows just how many black, female lawyers there are in Texas and America in 1935. She aims to join their ranks, which is why she’s debating. She’s the soul.

And Dr. Farmer’s precocious 14-year-old son (Denzel Whitaker, no relation to either star) is here because he has to be, but also because he’s dying to grow up and make his mark. He’s the brains, the master researcher who helps build the foundation that will take Wiley to glory.

Which is, if you’ve ever been to a sports movie, the road we’re on — “Glory Road.” We see the “training sequence,” enunciation exercises, the war of wills between the “star” and the coach, and a “big debate” in the finale. The team has to face racism, personality clashes, romantic rivalry and that defining moment that focuses them on the prize — the arguments that will make America a better place to live. They debate, first other black colleges, then white ones, on such subjects as the welfare state and civil disobedience.

John Heard is the obligatory racist sheriff trying to keep both blacks and poor whites down, suppressing union activities. It’s a little calculating, from its obligatory juke-joint trips to the staging of the climactic debate.