Wonderful character development!

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Though directed by the underrated Martin Ritt, "Conrack" is a generic and overly sentimental "teaching movie". Based on an autobiographical novel, "The Water Is Wide", the film stars Jon Voight as Pat Conroy, a young, idealistic teacher who is assigned to Yamacraw, an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina.As in keeping with the genre, Conroy finds himself thrust into a grim situation (teaching a number of poor, marginalised, black families), is chastised for his unorthodox and inspirational teaching methods, wins the hearts and minds of his students, inspires them to do greater things, and is himself touched by both his students and the "new culture" he has been exposed to. Very few films in the "teaching genre" break free of this template.Surprising for a film by the sensitive and once blacklisted Martin Ritt, "Conrack" is uncomfortably paternalistic and seems unconcerned with the wider, psychic effects of slavery (Conroy's students are "Gullah", descendants of South Carolinan slaves, and have preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage). And like most films which advocate "being non-conformist", "Conrack" is built upon clichés and is itself throughly conformist.6/10 – See "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie", Wiseman's "High School" and Laurent Cantet's "The Class". Worth one viewing.

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.

This movie is a piece of the time in which it was made..... Realistic. Movies were not candy coated during the late 60s and early 70s. The producers did not try to create some happy ending that didn't exist. The lack of a happy ending would create agitation in the audience that, hopefully would spur them on to action. At least that's how it seemed at the time. In today's movie world this movie would probably not be done. There would, definitely, not be this ending, however realistic. The sad fact is that the movie depicted a situation which could not be improved upon without action from the improvement of the relationship between the white southern traditional thinking and the progressive movements of that time.

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.