{"id":11239,"date":"2015-04-15T20:16:04","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T00:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11239"},"modified":"2015-04-15T20:28:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T00:28:30","slug":"br-conrack-1974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=11239","title":{"rendered":"BR: Conrack (1974)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Conrack_BR\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Excellent<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>:\u00a0Very Good<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Twilight Time<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a0All<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0March 11, 2014<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Drama \/ Teachers<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0An idealistic teacher attempts to bring a class of kids out from the dark ages of their isolated island world to the modern age in this vivid adaptation of Pat Conroy’s autobiographical novel “The Water is Wide.”<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Audio Commentary Track with producer Nick Redman and film historian & film editor Paul Seydor \/ Isolated Stereo Music Track \/ Theatrical Trailer \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/ Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first film version of Pat Conroy\u2019s autobiographical novel The Water is Wide<\/a><\/strong> is very much a reflection of the late sixties \/ early seventies, where a new crop of freshly minted teachers were keen on changing the world, bucking a conservative regime, and improving the lives of disenfranchised, marginalized kids, and empowering them with knowledge so they could save their community from withering into a wan culture.<\/p>\n

Conroy\u2019s hero bears his own name, but due to the isolated nature of the people living in the fictional island community of Yamacraw, Georgia, their mispronunciation results in the corruption \u201cConrack\u201d (although the school\u2019s principal, perhaps out of a certain disdain, always refers to him as \u201cPat Roy\u201d).<\/p>\n

As Nick Redman and film editor \/ historian Paul Seydor discuss in the disc\u2019s superb commentary track, the kids\u2019 inability to grasp his name probably stems from their own Gullah dialect<\/a>, a distillation from their roots as former slaves brought to the isle from colonies like the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Barbados.<\/p>\n

Pat \u2018Conrack\u2019 (Jon Voight) arrives with blazing optimism, but he\u2019s soon shocked by the corporal punishment meted out by principal Scott (Trapper John M.D.<\/strong>\u2019s Madge Sinclair, in a potent career-launching performance) and school superintendent Skeffington (Hume Cronyn).<\/p>\n

Kids of varying ages are treated as permanently arrested wastrels. Conrack\u2019s determination to advance their lives through music, art, history, nature, and role-playing, game-styled lessons in class and outside in the environs of their native isle does pay off, but at the cost of his own job – which could be regarded as too steep a price, or perhaps a necessary sacrifice for the kids\u2019 evolution; ready to be more critical of further instructors, and perhaps more open towards similar liberal-minded teachers.<\/p>\n

Twilight Time\u2019s snagging Seydor for the commentary is highly fortuitous \u2013 he taught the book in a course designed to explain select works of modern American literature with their filmic counterparts \u2013 so viewers will find a wealth of insight into the differences between Conroy\u2019s book and the screen adaptation by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch. Besides name changes and the creation of the teenage character Mary (played by future writer \/ director Tina Andrews), there are a few new scenes meant to enhance what\u2019s clearly an adaptation that reflects the year 1974. It\u2019s a film that also wears its liberal values on its sleeves in blazing Technicolor, but the central focus is on Conrack\u2019s relationship with the kids, and their gradual edification.<\/p>\n

If Pat Conrack is a faithful representation of author Conroy, his teaching style is pure positive reinforcement: he doesn\u2019t ridicule, chastise, embarrass, nor berate any kid when there\u2019s an incorrect answer; confusion is spun off into a tangential discussion that benefits the class as a whole. Class outings to the forest force the kids to examine the finer details of their environment, and in some cases, a trip to the beach breaks their stark fear of the water, given the encircling waterways have a dark history of claiming lives young and old.<\/p>\n

The benevolent teacher genre has its share of immutable tropes, such as the inevitable head-butting with staid, creaky authority figures. One risky venture ultimately endangers the hero: a verboten a trip to the mainland so the kids can experience a classic American Halloween.<\/p>\n

Ravetch and Frank\u2019s script does have a few scenes easily deemed contrived and \/ or just plain weird: Skeffington recognizing a protestor on the local TV news as his son is a cheap chuckle; and near the finale, Conrack\u2019s sudden rental of a truck with a loudspeaker system, clacking to suburban citizens about getting fired for doin\u2019 good should\u2019ve been snipped from the film entirely.<\/p>\n

Director Martin Ritt, however, mines his cast of stars, character actors, and non-actors for very natural performances, and the location of Daufuskie Island<\/a>, South Caolina, is amazing<\/em>. John A. Alonzo\u2019s cinematography is absolutely stunning \u2013 his compositions are truly artful, with snaking roads, marshes, and walkways evoking the island\u2019s surrounding waterways.<\/p>\n

The sets are finely detailed with wear, tear, and odd nick-knacks, and John Williams\u2019 score (isolated in stereo on a separate track) is quite discrete, appearing only when absolutely necessary, and stepping away when performance and dialogue are more than sufficient to deliver a scene\u2019s dramatic punch.<\/p>\n

Still unavailable on DVD, Twilight Time\u2019s Blu-ray fills in a necessary void, rescuing this lost gem for fans of the benevolent teacher genre, and the lively discussion track \u2013 because that\u2019s really what it is \u2013 contextualizes the film and Conroy\u2019s interest in human psychology.<\/p>\n

The trailer is a real curio, and shows studio Fox had no idea how to market Ritt\u2019s film, given it\u2019s not a feel-good drama, nor an adventure-comedy, nor a period piece. (One could even regard Conrack\u2019s journey as time-travelling, since he ventures from his suburban environs to a depressed world, and makes repeated efforts to explain the present day world to the island\u2019s blindered kids, ultimately planning a trip to the mainland to show what has existed for decades just a few miles near the island\u2019s shores.)<\/p>\n

Julie Kirgo\u2019s booklet essay rightly praises Ritt, and it is peculiar that\u2019s he\u2019s perceived (by some) as a marginal director, given his gift for extracting strong performances from actors, his ability to mine a location\u2019s flavours, and just make a solid, unpretentious drama.<\/p>\n

Other works by Pat Conroy adapted into feature films include The Great Santini <\/strong>(1979), The Lords of Discipline<\/strong> (1983), and The Prince of Tides<\/strong> (1991).<\/p>\n

The Water is Wide<\/strong> was remade in 2006 as a Hallmark TV movie, and while more compact and offering some material directly from the novel (retaining the characters\u2019 original names, Conroy\u2019s fianc\u00e9e, his trips back & forth to the mainland, and the community refusing to send their kids to school until Conroy\u2019s job is restored), its treacly genetics make it a lesser effort, lacking the realism of Ritt\u2019s more gritty approach, and Voight\u2019s appropriately lively performance.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the teleplay\u2019s wrap-up in which Conroy\u2019s literary alter ego tells the community \u2018they\u2019ve won\u2019, whereas in the film Ritt opts for a simpler, less obvious scene: Ritt boldly holds on a wide shot as Conrack is ferried away by boat to the sounds Beethoven\u2019s 5th Symphony \u2013 a classical piece he introduced to the kids, and one they chose to play on the dock to express their new-found confidence.<\/p>\n

Martin Ritt\u2019s other films include The Long Hot Summer<\/a><\/strong> (1958), The Sound and the Fury<\/a><\/strong> (1959), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold<\/a><\/strong> (1965), and The Front<\/a><\/strong> (1976).<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2015 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a> \u00a0— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first film version of Pat Conroy\u2019s autobiographical novel The Water is Wide is very much a reflection of the late sixties \/ early seventies, where a new crop of freshly minted teachers were keen on changing the world, bucking a conservative regime, and improving the lives of disenfranchised, marginalized kids, and empowering them with knowledge…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[3610,1539,3607,1538,148,3605,3608,1536,3603,3606,3604,3609],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2Vh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11239"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11239"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11253,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11239\/revisions\/11253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}