Conrack

Pat Conroy is one of our most elegant writers, and his first book, a memoir of his adventure teaching a group of heart-breakingly neglected and ignorant black children on an island off the coast of South Carolina should be required upper-class reading for kids who have To Kill a Mockingbird under their belts.

Now, the movie: If you read the book, the movie will seem so Hollywoodized that you'll wonder who "cuted-up" Conrack (the kids' pronunciation for Conroy). Jon Voight is earnest and sweaty, and pulls off Conroy's youthful self-righteousness to a T, but Hume Cronyn is miscast as the evil, bigoted superintendent. The kids are strangely ignored here, although they are complex and fascinating in their own right in the book. Voight's teaching is the best part of this film, but Conroy's explanation to the white citizenry of why he should be retained--after annoying the county school administration for the last time--is destroyed by the ridiculous scene with Voight driving the streets of Buford, using a P.A. system on his hippiemobile to bludgeon bewildered suburbanites.

Hell, watch it anyway.

I have also watched "Conrack" several times in the past few years and I believe it is the best movie out there about actual classroom teaching. We have "To Sir, With Love", "Blackboard Jungle" and "Mr Holland's Opus", but this film spends most of its time in class with the students.

We get to see Conroy struggle with the system, the absence of facilities and resources as well as the initial lack of desire among his charges. How he brings his "babies" out of their shells and creates a learning environment is simply magical. The awkwardness of those first lessons is all too real. This movie is pure teaching!

Another realistic education film that comes to mind is "Stand and Deliver."

Check out first few minutes of "Conrack" and you'll be hooked. Watch for it on Fox Movie Channel as they often show the letterbox version.

I not only consider this to be the best film that Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home) has ever done, but a real tribute to teachers.

Despite incredible odds, Pat Conroy (Voight) managed to reach a group of students and bring them from nowhere to a basic literacy and awareness of the world. His methods made be criticized by bureaucratic dinosaurs like Mr. Skeffington (Hume Cronyn), but teachers like Conroy will always be winners.

Voight really showed that he had a love for teaching and that it was a natural high for him. He didn't overplay the role, and I found him to be totally believable. Voight is Conrack.

Besides a love of teaching, we also see another important point in this film. No matter how good you are at your job, if you rock the boat, the bureaucrats will get you.

Pat Conroy's autobiographical book "The Water Is Wide" proves to be something of a Southern "Up The Down Staircase", yet despite the teacher-going-against-the-odds formula, "Conrack" really does move the audience with each little breakthrough and creative flash. These students (uneducated black kids on an island off South Carolina) are actually shown learning, and their collective wide-eyed innocence is remarkably sweet. The one actual actress in the bunch (Tina Andrews, an amazing performer) plays the "tough nut" Conrack has to crack, and once she falls under his charms, it all seems a breeze. But the story is not ready-made for a happy ending, and I wasn't prepared for the quiet simplicity of the finale. It's beautifully done. The script veers off course every now and then, but director Martin Ritt is very smart to always fall back on Jon Voight's solid presence. Scenes such as the one where he drives around in his van venting his frustrations over a loudspeaker don't add up to much, but the whole film is filled with episodes which spark emotion, and the actual ending is their payoff. **1/2 out of ****

Martin Ritt seems to be a director who was always interested in social issues (as the son of immigrants, he had every incentive to be so, especially since he was blacklisted in the '50s). "Conrack" is based on Pat Conroy's novel "The Water is Wide", about his own experience in 1969 teaching a school of impoverished black children about the outside world, much to the chagrin of the right-wing superintendent (Hume Cronyn). What added to the movie's strength was the cultural and historical context: Conroy (Jon Voight) frustratedly tells another teacher how many of the children don't know about Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, the Vietnam War, or even where Vietnam is. He proceeds to enlighten them about all these factors.

Somewhere, I read a complaint that when Conroy played music for the children, he only played white music. The truth is, you can't blame the movie for that; it was based on Conroy's real experience. Either way, the movie's a real gem.