I have to say that I had mixed feelings about this movie. On the positive side, the basic story is very interesting and inspiring - both well told and well acted. It's also a powerful testimony of what can happen when a teacher actually wants to teach, and does so with passion, wit and intelligence. All that was good. Jon Voight was superb as the title character of Pat Conroy (Conrack was what his students called him) - a young schoolteacher sent to an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina to teach a class of black and mostly illiterate students, and who runs into opposition from everyone - the parents, his principal (Madge Sinclair) and the school administrator (Hume Cronyn) - as he tries to do it. In one sense, it's a pretty typical story; one that's been done many, many times. As unoriginal as the story may be, though, it's still well done. Those are the positives. Unfortunately, I also had a bit of a negative gut reaction to this movie. It struck me as paternalistic; the sort of movie one might expect from what you could call the "white liberal establishment" of the early '70's. Basically, a bunch of black kids have to be saved from everybody (including their own parents and that black principal who thinks that "coloured kids" need the feel of "the whip" to learn anything) by a white liberal schoolteacher. Bluntly, it struck me as a bit of a guilt assuager for whites who needed to feel better about themselves in the aftermath of the civil rights battles of the 60's. As for the movie itself, the character of Mad Billy (Paul Winfield) struck me as poorly developed. Aside from popping up in maybe 3 or 4 scenes and offering some comic relief, I wasn't clear what the purpose of his character was. Then, if indeed this was based on a true story, one might have appreciated some information at the end as to what happened to these kids. Were they so inspired by Conroy that they went on to bigger and better things, or did they just sink right back into their old ways when he left. The ending was both ambiguous and unsatisfying. On balance, I liked the movie but was also a bit put off by it at the same time. A strange combination of reactions. 6/10
