PG | 1h 46 min | Drama | 1974
Director Martin Ritt’s intimate film draws from “The Water is Wide,” Georgia-born Pat Conroy’s memoir about his experiences as a school teacher on the tiny island of Yamacraw, South Carolina.
Descendants of poor black slaves and their families inhabit Yamacraw. The island school is a shack, packed with illiterate black kids aged 10 to 13, who have been cut off from the world since infancy. They struggle to pronounce English words and names, and end up calling Conroy, “Conrack.”
Conrack (Jon Voight) cares. You see it from the opening shot. Just out of bed in the early morning, eyes barely open, he stumbles through his room feeding his fish in a tank, his bird in a cage, his plant near a window….