The Great Debaters

A film set in Texas in 1935. Wiley College is a small Black college. A literature teacher, Melvin Tolson, forms a debate team. Among those chosen are a fourteen-year-old student, a hard-working young man and the college's first woman debater. The preparation sections are the best of it: building an argument, writing the opposition's case in advance, work on voice and stance. The second line is Tolson himself. A teacher by day, he organises farm workers in the evenings and is watched for it. As the team's success grows his politics become a danger to the school. The team meets white universities on the road. The hardest scene in the narrative is not a debate; it is a lynching seen along the way. At the end the team faces one of the best known universities in the country. The opponent was a different school in fact; the film changed it. Denzel Washington plays Tolson and directed. Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker are in the cast. Oprah Winfrey's company is among the producers. An effective production for anyone who likes school films based on real events and scenes of argument. For a viewer after information, the film arranges the historical events to dramatic need.