Shared Darkness

Coming as it did on the heels of Denzel Washington’s
high-profile on-screen turn opposite Russell Crowe in American Gangster, and given that it was Washington’s follow-up
behind the camera to a well received directorial debut, 2002’s Antwone Fisher, The Great Debaters was expected last fall to be a major player at
this year’s Academy Awards ceremony.

Its critical reception, while not fall-out rapturous, was
solid across the board, and there was the line of reasoning that, particularly
when stacked up against other critical consensus picks that might be perceived
as less mainstream accessible (There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men),
the movie could be a big, heartstring-tugging crossover hit in the vein of Million Dollar Baby, which would give it
a flush populist sentiment come Oscar time. Having kingmaker Oprah Winfrey on
board as a producer certainly didn’t hurt.

While the movie opened respectably, and has grossed over $28
million thus far, The Great Debaters
didn’t quite carry its argument with viewers. It was relatively
anonymous on many critics’ year-end lists, and one of six Golden Globe nominees for Best Picture Drama — a prize it lost,
to Atonement. While the cancellation of the attendant, glitzy awards ceremony certainly didn’t help the movie,
there’s no evidence to suggest it hurt The
Great Debaters more than other movies with lower profile stars and/or
stories.

In this context, the film’s snub at the recent Oscar
nominations comes as no surprise. Still, The
Great Debaters proves something unequivocally: it confirms Washington’s
skill at adapting and shepherding to the big screen emotionally resonant dramas
that might otherwise be derisively classified as movie-of-the-week material.
Lacking any affectation or postmodern shading, Washington’s
years of experience behind the camera make him an excellent arbiter of
emotional truth, and his skill as a filmmaker lies in an ability to ferret it
out and showcase it without over-relying on gimmickry.

Set in the mid-1930s and inspired by a true story, The Great Debaters chronicles the
journey of college professor Melvin Tolson (Washington)
and his charges. A brilliant but somewhat volatile instructor, the controversial
Tolson challenged the social mores of the time and was under constant fire for
his unconventional teaching methods, as well as his radical political views. Using
the power of words, Tolson set out to shape a group of underdog students — a
group including Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett) and
James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) — from his African American college in small
town Texas into a nationally significant and historically elite debate team.

For Washington,
the film was a four-year journey — most of it pleasant, if slow-moving. “This
was just a really good story, I call it a sports movie,” says Washington
at a press conference in advance of the film’s release. “In those days, that’s
what they considered a spectator sport. It was a very popular event to go to;
there were only 360 students at this college and they were going up against
these big schools. That was very fascinating.”

“I worked on the screenplay for a long time,” he adds.
“Between jobs I would shoot and come home, I would sit with the writers. I
worked a lot with Bob Eisele, who had written the original screenplay.” That
was rewarding, if tedious. The problem is that Washington,
as with Antwone Fisher, was very
reluctant to appear both behind and in front of the camera. “The acting part of
it?” asks Washington with a
good-natured sigh. “Well, I didn’t want to be in the movie. It was just in
order to get enough of the money I felt we needed to make the movie, I had to be in it. So once I knew that was
the case, I said, ‘Okay, well, Denzel, just embrace it. Don’t be negative about
it, just do it.’”

“And I think had a good sense [of things],” continues Washington.
“I usually do two, or three, or four takes, and if I felt good, I’d just move
on. I was more concerned with getting everybody else’s performance. I’m pretty
good, so I figure three takes and I’ll be okay.” He pauses and laughs. “With
me, I always thought, ‘I’ll cut it together later on, I’ll build a performance
out of it.’”

For Washington
and his costars, the success of The Great Debaters lies in the message it promulgates — that we have a responsibility
to ourselves, individually, but also collectively, as a society. “An
environment was created for these young people at Wiley
College,” says Washington.
“One of the things that was important to me, and a big part of this story to
tell, was that this young boy thought that his father was being less than a
man, or that he had to kowtow or shrink himself when he comes up against these
pig farmers,” says Washington, describing a scene in which young James Farmer,
Jr. sees his father (Forest Whitaker) humiliated after accidentally striking a
swine with the family’s car.

“Maybe he thought Tolson was more of a rebel, and the sexy
guy, the hipper guy,” Washington
continues. “But in the eleventh hour, it was James’ own father that got Tolson
out of trouble. So it is still our responsibility as adults to create a
supportive environment, which we have not done. If you look at politics or
anything else, we spend so much time dwelling on the negative. These characters
[and the real people upon whom they’re based] did not excel in a vacuum. It was
because somebody was there and someone made the sacrifice for them to excel.”

If the art of debate (over win-at-all-costs rhetoric) is
being lost, Washington is
ambivalent about where that takes us as a society, and what that ultimately
means. “I just know we aren’t developing that muscle and magic [of speech and
writing] like we used to,” he says. “We went from spoken word to radio to
television to film to computers.” Sliding scale or devolution, it’s hard to
say. Washington’s muscle memory,
however, is well developed from his decades as an actor, and he’s utilizing it
as a director to bring evocative, emotionally effective dramas about the human
condition to the big screen. If he keeps it up, one of these days, he may not
even have to appear in front of the camera as well as behind it.
For the full, slightly re-tweaked feature piece, as published by FilmStew, click here.