The Water Is Wide (2006)

• Year: 2006
• Released: 29 Jan 2006
• Country: United States
• Adwords: Nominated for 2 Primetime Emmys. 1 win & 3 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0444706/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_water_is_wide
• Metacritics:
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: TV-PG
• Genre: Drama
• Runtime: 100 min
• Writer: Pat Conroy, Jonathan Estrin
• Director: John Kent Harrison
• Cast: Jeff Hephner, Frank Langella, Julianne Nicholson
• Keywords: gullah,

	7.0/10
	66% – Critics
	false% – Audience

The Water Is Wide Storyline

Jeff Hephner stars as a young Pat Conroy, an idealistic young teacher who, having failed to trade his military academy education for a spot in the 1969 Peace Corps, finds a first teaching position on an isolated Sea Island off Charleston, South Carolina.Yamacraw Island (actually Daufuskie Island, now a wealthy resort location with almost no original inhabitants remaining) is an impoverished, almost all African-American spot on the Atlantic Coast with a two-room schoolhouse housing grades 1-8. The only whites on the island control the store, the library (only opened if someone wants a specific book), the post office, and the ferry to the mainland. The Blacks are subsistence farmers. Now that the local school has been merged into the larger county school district, the superintendent (Frank Langella) is attempting to provide a very unspecified “better education” for the island’s children, although he seems more impressed with Conroy’s school and parental knowledge of the rigidness of the “chain of command.”The young Conroy finds the island school a disaster. His “principal,” Mrs. Brown (Alfre Woodard), uses tough love (beatings and verbal humiliation) to teach her students “manners” but little else. The students in grades 5-8 cannot read or write, do not know which nation they live in, and have no idea of what the ocean which surrounds them is called. They know no mathematics. They do not even have any grasp of their own history.Struggling against Mrs. Brown, Assistant Superintendent Bennington (James Murtaugh), the local whites, and the Superintendent’s chain of command, Conroy brings the students to life, showing them films (which they have never seen), reading them stories, connecting them to maps, and listening to the life stories of the kids. He even manages a field trip off the island, a first for almost every child.In response the children begin to flourish, moving ahead dramatically both academically and personally, and Conroy seems to find a real mission in life.But, 1969 being much like today, the powers that be have no real interest in these poor children receiving an actual education, rather, they much prefer Mrs. Brown’s stability and lessons in compliance. In the end, Conroy is not asked to return to Yamacraw for a second year, and moves on to marriage on the mainland, and other jobs, and eventually, his career as an author.

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The Water Is Wide Movie Reviews

Right on target

The Water is Wide is based on Pat Conroy’s book of the same title. It recounts a year he spent teaching African-American children on a remote barrier island off the South Carolina coast in the late 1960s. Mr. Conroy was young, naive, idealistic, and controversial. There are people still living in the South Carolina Lowcountry who regret the outcome of the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, who will tell you that this work is fictional and unfair to the school superintendent and the black teacher. From my own experience working in Georgia schools during the same period, I know that Conroy’s observations are right on target.

It is interesting to contrast this Hallmark Hall of Fame movie with the earlier Conrack. While Conrack was contemporary reporting, this movie is more historical. Daufauskie Island (called Yamacraw in the book and both films) is fast becoming an exclusive resort community. Several generations of teachers have passed through the school and it has come under public scrutiny.

This film makes a genuine effort to look at the situation of the black teacher trying to satisfy a white administration. Alfre Woodard states that Mrs. Brown is a very unique sort of black woman that existed during that period. She plays the character with more subtlety than Madge Sinclair did. Jeff Hephner does a fine job as the idealist novice teacher in unfamiliar surroundings. He plays Conroy with less anger than Jon Voight did, but is more believable.

Very good story, but narrator annoying. Worth seeing.

Basically, this movie was great. The characters were good, the plot, the message, etc. However, I would seriously advise against using a narrator like that again. Having to hear “and she pursed her lips and smiled” while the character did just that was not adding to the movie. I would see the movie for the really interesting and nice story and try to tune out the narrator. And, a little more about the movie: It is based off a book that I have not read, but after seeing this I may It is about a school teacher who begins to teach at a small school on an island on the East coast, with primarily black children. It is set in the 60s or 70s, and the school isn’t very good. The children don’t really know much about reading and writing, and when he comes they are hard pressed to even name the country they live in. His methods are much different then those being used, and annoy the principal of the not more than 10 children school. It is about Conroy (the teacher) trying to improve the kid’s education and how they look at the world.

Why did they remake it?

This is a remake of the 1974 film “Conrack”, starring John Voight as Pat Conroy. Both films were based on Conroy’s autobiographical novel “The Water Is Wide”. The 1974 film won a special UN award from the British Actors & Film Technicians Association and the screenplay was nominated for an award by the Writers’ Guild of America. The new version, “The Water Is Wide”, shows no improvement over the original.

The story is simple and pleasant. A new, young, white, male teacher gets a job teaching the upper grades in a all-black elementary school on an island off the coast of South Carolina. The principal, who teaches the junior grades, is black. She maintains discipline by beating the children. Pat Conroy does not believe in the effectiveness of corporal punishment; instead, he wins over the class with a combination of openness, honesty, humour and tough love.

If you have not seen Conrack, then I could recommend this film, if you do not mind predictable films. One could probably predict the main developments from what I have already said, so I will say no more.