nan | 楠木

As a debating fan, needless to say I was quite excited when I first heard of this film. And on the whole it meets my expectations, though there were some aspects which could have been done better.

Directed by and starring Denzel Washington, the film is based on the true story of the African American debating team of Wiley College in the 1930s. The source material is great: racism and the fight against inequality are central themes, and they fit naturally in a film about debating – since these themes have been eternal topics of real debates, both in debating competitions and of course in society at large. In the film, the plot naturally blends together the African American students’ fight against racism in real life with their fight against it on-stage.

And I couldn’t help but envy them for that – from my own debating experience, that really is the dream of any debater – to be on-stage, and persuasively argue for a cause that you passionately believe in. Not in every debate, or rather, only in few debates, will you have the luxury of doing that.

Enough of my own sentiments – regarding the film, my only disappointment was that the overall end-product seemed somewhat too generic of an underdog film – you could find many films where you had characters fighting an uphill battle, and while it was inspiring, it didn’t feel original. But maybe that’s asking for too much.

I do have another complaint, though, about the film changing the identity of the team that they debated finally – from USC to Harvard, “since Harvard had a better reputation”. It is understandable for works of art to alter real events to gain better artistic effects, but such a change doesn’t sound off well with what I see as the central virtue of debating – honesty.

7/10