Download The Great Debaters PS3
February 8th, 2010 by krystal1027258 |
Download The Great Debaters PS3.
Movie Title: The Great Debaters The Great Debaters is available for streaming or downloading. |
`The Great Debaters’ offers what great movie viewing is all about. Based on a true story, the film takes us to Wiley, an African-American Methodist college in Texas during the Depression in 1935. Inspiring, harrowing, and uplifting, the film gives proper transcendence especially during a time and place that didn’t offer many breaks.
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We are first introduced to Professor Polson (Denzel Washington), a tenacious idealist and poet. As professor at Wiley and debate coach, he hardly yields on any of his principles. Inspired by the man who is named for the heinous lynching, Polson tells his debate recruits that it was in Lynch’s best interests to keep Black people, “Physically strong, but psychologically weak.” It is with this explanation that we understand his zealous approach to his debate team, and why he makes their training so rigorous.
Entering the field are forty-five tryouts, of which, only four will be selected: two representatives and two alternates. Of the three who make it, we get to know Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) a charismatic and bright figurehead who is easily distracted by beautiful women and hard liquor. Joining him are Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), the first young woman to join the debate team, and James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) forever young at age 14, but an ever resourceful scholar and son of a minister, James Farmer, Sr. (Forrest Whitaker). [No real life relations.] As he notices a romance start to blossom between his teammates, his resentment grows. As the one who researches many of the arguments Henry and Samantha provide on the podium, he is put on the sidelines both in terms of the limelight and the love light.
Buy,Download, Or Stream The Great Debaters! Click Here
As you might guess, Wiley enjoys a certain amount of success, and the price of success is opposition. Polson spends a great deal of his time and rhetorical talent organizing a sharecroppers’ union, much to the chagrin of Sheriff Dozier (John Heard) who won’t have unrest in his sleepy Texas town. In one scene the Farmer family is making a trek by car on a rural country road as they pass a poor white farm. The children who seem so mischievous run alongside the car as they pass along, unaccustomed to seeing a “Negro” with an automobile. Perhaps distracted by the nearby children, he runs over a pig, and in a quietly intense exchange between Farmer, Sr. and the owner, is extorted of a month’s paycheck. This reminded me of a similar scene in the 1980’s movie, `Centennial,’ and showed the contrast between a good film with a similar theme and a great one.
In another part, the debate team makes their way by night to their debate destination when they come across a truly horrible sight. What they see through the windshield reveals a mob of white men who don’t like having their heinous deeds brought to light. Shaken, they each try to come to cope with their discovery as they often lose focus and courage in the face of Polson’s opposition and the violence laid before them.
Always kept in check by their unyielding leader, the debate team holds out for all possible opportunity. Audacious but unflinching, Polson invites Harvard to a debate match. One of the master strokes of the movie is how the debates and their topics match the action that goes on all around them. Show and tell is mixed expertly for a meaningful movie experience.
`The Great Debaters’ is a top-echelon movie experience. Although it is reminiscent of movies like Mississippi Burning, To Kill a Mockingbird (Collector’s Edition), and Akeelah and the Bee it captures a fulfilling true life story in a way that doesn’t feel like rehash or contain a wasted scene. (Directed by Denzel Washington and screenplay by Robert Eisele)
Please allow me to give a brief summary of life for African Americans, circa 1935:
* “Jim Crow Laws” were in effect In the Southern US, requiring “separate but equal” facilities for Blacks and Whites, including schools, bathrooms, etc.
* African Americans weren’t issued birth certificates by some States, thus denying them basic rights of existence
* African Americans were called Negroes–or worse, and treated accordingly
* If an Afican American wanted an education beyond high school, most went to private segregated colleges
Forgive me if you already know this, but for some, this brief history lesson is all the African American history they’ve had and this small amount will help understand the times and the people.
“The Great Debaters” takes place at Wiley College, a private Negro college, in Marshall, TX. The semester has just begun and it’s time for tryouts for the debate team with Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington) as the coach.
Out of 45 students, only 4 make the cut. That’s two team members and two alternates. Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams) is the only returning student.
Henry Lowe (Nate Parker) is obviously the pick of the crop. He’s so much of the same mind as Tolson, they could easily be enemies if they weren’t aligned, but both men have their own demons chasing them. Samantha Booke, alternate, (Jumee Smollett), wants to be the third Negro woman to practice law in the State of Texas. She’s ambitious and she nearly lets romance with Lowe get in her way. James Farmer, Jr., alternate, (Denzel Whitaker), is only 14 years old and being strongly pushed by his father Dr. James Farmer, Sr (Forest Whitaker, who is not related to him) to excel in his studies and not let the debate team get in his way.
Tolson’s got an ambitious program started. From the beginning, he’s writing top schools, challenging them to match wits with his students.
As the team wins, more invitations come in. Meanwhile, Tolson is privately leading an effort to form a union for the Black and White sharecroppers of the area. Unfortunately, the local farmers disapprove and the meeting’s attacked with the local Sheriff in the lead. Tolson himself nearly goes to jail and loses one member of his team because he’s got a dangerous reputation as a Communist.
“The Great Debaters” may not be completely accurate about the histories of the people it depicts, but it is an education to the times themselves. We learn some poignant lessons about the origin of the term lynching and see an example. We also learn about civil disobedience and what it really means–and costs–to stand up for what you believe in.
Some describe this as a ‘feel good’ or ‘team’ film and I don’t dispute either of these findings, but “The Great Debaters” is also an opportunity to demonstrate the history of a time and of a people. In my opinion, this is a very good film to show to history classes of all colors, because too few people do realize the conditions of the past and the price African American people paid for a better education and more chances to interact and compete on an equal basis.
