Songcatcher

Plot synopsis:
In 1907, Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a professor of musicology, is denied a promotion at the university where she teaches. She impulsively visits her sister Eleanor (Jane Adams), who runs a struggling rural school in Appalachia. There, she discovers a treasure trove of traditional Scots Irish ballads, which have been preserved by the secluded mountain people since the colonial period of the 1600s and 1700s. Lily decides to record and transcribe the songs and share them with the outside world.
With the help of a musically talented orphan named Deladis Slocumb (Emmy Rossum), Lily ventures into isolated areas of the mountains to collect the songs. She finds herself increasingly enchanted, not only by the rugged purity of the music, but also by the courage and endurance of the local people as they carve out meaningful lives against the harsh conditions. She becomes privy to their struggles to save their land from Earl Giddens (David Patrick Kelly), representative of a coal mining company. At the same time, Lily is troubled when she finds that Eleanor is engaged in a lesbian love affair with her co-teacher at the school.
Lily meets Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn), a handsome, hardened war veteran and talented musician. Despite some initial resentment, she soon begins a love affair with him. She experiences a slow change in both her perception of the mountain people as savage and uncouth, and of her sister's sexuality as immoral. Hoping to help share the culture of the mountain people with the wider world, Lily convinces Clementine McFarland (Rhoda Griffis), an art collector, to purchase a painting done by a local woman.
Events come to a crisis when a young man discovers Eleanor and her lover, Harriet, kissing in the woods. That night, two men set fire to the school building, burning Eleanor, Harriet, and Deladis out of their home and destroying Lily's transcriptions of the ballads and her phonograph recordings. Rather than starting over again, Lily decides to leave, but she convinces Tom and Deladis to "go down the mountain" with her to make and sell phonograph recordings of mountain music. As they depart, Cyrus Whittle, a renowned professor from England, arrives on a collection foray of his own, ensuring that the ballads will be preserved in the manner that Lily had originally intended.

Tags: dramatic, romantic, murder

Review:
I don't know if I can argue with that.Neither could Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), Doctor of Musicology, who came up into the mountains to visit her sister Elna (Jane Adams), and discovered music that had not been heard by "outlanders" in hundreds of years.
The main character Lily's love oozes off the screen and shames everyone who's ever made a tape or CD music collection with far less effort and trial -- and persistence.
The movie exposes the hardships, ignorances, prejudices, resourcefulness, intelligence, commonsense and heart of the people who remained out of touch with "progress".The movie has some graphic and controversial scenes; but the majority is appropriate for all ages.The way the folk music is in-twined in the lives of the local people is magical and authentic.
Songcatcher is a fantastic film about understanding culture and people throughout the beauty of music and the poetry of songs.
Every beat and word represents something that in many ways is so personally related to people's lives, history and emotions.This is the lovely story of Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) a preeminent teacher musician who impulsively decides to run to visit her sister at a struggling rural school in the Appalachia, right after being denied of an anticipated promotion where she teaches.
Over there (in the mountains) she founds a new meaning to her life by finding love and discovering very culturally important Scott-Irish ballads that she might use to save her promotion.The whole cast performances are awesome, especially Janet McTeer who comes back with another tremendous performance and Aidan Quinn who hasn't been this good so far.
A nice surprise, since I spend long hours listening to Alan Lomax's field recordings of mountaineers singing old ballads when I was at Bard College - and later parlayed that experience into a radio job, hosting a traditional music show.That aspect alone should make anyone loves this music run to see the show.
The castng overall is superb - Janet McTeer is a unique and believable presence; Pat Carroll delightful as a mountain matriarch; Aiden Quinn his charming, virile self.The plot is acceptable, if not 100% believable - several of the (discreet) sexual situations peppered throughout seem much colored by modern attitudes.
The film is very enjoyable with some exceptional acting particularly in the case of Janet McTeer, Aidan Quinn and Emmy Rossum and features some lovely and moving renditions of classic ballads.
The film's focus is on musicologist Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) in the early 1900s who has just been passed over for a permanent teaching position for the second time.
While collecting the songs, Lily slowly begins to crack from her shell and she learns to love the people of the mountain.
All the songs in this movie were amazing and as soon as I saw this film I went out and bought the soundtrack.
This film captivates the beauty of the Carolina Mountains and shows what the music of the mountains is really like.
The things that I liked about this film are the beautiful cinematography of the Appalachian mountains that really enhance the realistic quality of the film and of course the music.
The music is the central ingredient in this story and the Scottish and Irish ballads add an indelible flavor that really make it the primary reason to view this film.
I've always like Aidan Quinn and I love that Janet McTeer is not a Kewpie doll someone stuck into a serious film.
The music and lyrics were very haunting, and gave a good look into how life was like for this particular group of people.If you are looking for a movie that is beautiful, thoughtful, endearing, and is filled with original and stirring music this is a must see for you!
The singers and other performers were excellent, and serve as a reminder of the great music that comes out of the mountains.The movie, however, fails to inspire.
My impression of the film was that the writer/director wanted to make a movie about mountain music, and proceeded to write dramatic filler.
As opposed to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", where the movie was as entertaining as the music, the drama seems to go nowhere.One of the subplots, about two lesbians inhabiting the mountain, doesn't seem to have much of a point at all, other than to bring about the ending that the writer wanted.
Examples include the lesbians making love right along a trail, Rossum's boyfriend through most of the movie, or even McTeer's relationship with a married man.
It's unfortunate, since the rest of the actors do a very good job, especially Pat Carroll.My recommendation is to rent the movie and fastforward, stopping during the singing scenes..
We recently found out that friends of ours who share a love of music by real singer-songwriters (say, Richard Thompson or Iris Dement or Loudon Wainwright) had never seen this movie.
If for nothing else but the chance to see Iris Dement (the headliner in the cast as far as we're concerned) act as well as sing.The wonderful contrast between the very white bread muzak version of Barbry Allen at the beginning and the much more human one by the folks who passed it down later on in the film is for me what the movie is all about.
She then turns on her academic engines and decides to collect and publish this wondrous music of the Appalachians.She is taken to "Songcatchers", or the people who are the preservers of this oral legacy, to learn the songs.
It tries to deal with lesbianism, untrustworthy men, distrustful and violent mountain people, the harshness of the land and life, a male-dominated community and the music.
The performances of Janet McTeer and Pat Carroll stand out, and Aiden Qiinn was good as the mountain man who "had seen the world".
The musical performances of Emmy Rossum, Iris Dement and Hazel Dickens made my heart soar.The film opens in Baltimore this week and I'll be there to see it again.
I only wish there was more of Emmy Rossum and the other music with that Appalachian "edge" on the soundtrack CD, as opposed to the more highly produced songs by more famous people, whose voices/characters did not appear in the film..
I think we learned about Songcatcher via Netflix about three years ago during the O, Brother Where Art Thou and Down From the Mountain excitement.As a movie it was lacking something; all the pieces were there but it didn't quite sizzle.
The reason for this, I think, was the way they shot the film: it was 'too pretty' and therefore unreal, especially for representing lives in the mountains of North Carolina during the timeframe of the movie, so the viewer was sort of outside looking in.That said, however, we LOVED the music and the opening up of the roots of mountain music, and that's why I gave it an '8'.
Anyway this movie was one piece of our growing love affair with this sort of music, especially on the mountain gospel side of things, all the way to the present day with Ollabelle, and the Anonymous Four (American Angels).And to first have encountered Emmy Rossum here and then just recently enjoying her performance in Phantom of the Opera is a real treat.
Janet McTeer plays a 1960s "musicologist: who goes to the Smokey Mountains, loves the music and wants to document it.
Along the way to paying tribute to this historic and wonderful mountain music, the story gets sidetrack by one major issue: out-of-control feminist bias.Hey, you want to make a "chick flick," fine - there are a number of them out there, but don't disguise this agenda by passing it off as some tribute to music, or the mountains.No, this is out-and-out male bashing, complete with only one decent male character (played by Aiden Quinn), the rest all being unlikeable guys.
Oh, wow!!!Hey, loved the music and the scenery, but this is nothing but a Lesbian propaganda piece and - even worse - it's simply a boring film..
It tells the story of musicologist Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) who travels to an isolated village in the Appalachians and gets to hear the music of the Scottish-Irish people there in the early 20th century.
Because what Lily hears does many things: aside from just being great music, it shows how the people in this village may not be educated or anything like that - and could even be inbred - but they still have their culture.
I value this movie particularly because my great Aunt Mary Jane Queen was an original source for some of the music and I am a descendant of people who lived like this only 4 generations ago.
I even bought the correlating CDs. I know that the people who made this movie must have enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery and the amazing music.
I thought the movie was a lovely film and moved me to tears when they were singing.
I would recommend this movie to anyone who has an interest in the mountain music.
So she spends much of the rest of the film gaining the trust of the locals as well as recording and writing down their songs for posterity as well as let outside folks know that there is great beauty and wisdom in the hills.
The music is great and so is the movie which features some excellent music, including a screen performance by folk singer Iris Dement, a little known and enormously talented artist..
Add to that a jealous mistress, a difficult childbirth, a couple of condescending swells from the city, and a country boy that's turned his back on his roots, and the mountain folk of "Songcatcher" start to feel like the cast of a soap opera, with everyone undergoing a unique and interesting crisis.The basic premise, though, is a good one.
Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a professor of music in the early 20th century, gets fed up dealing with the male-dominated world of academia and literally heads for the hills, where her sister Elna runs a school with another woman (her lover, we later learn).
With the aid of a phonograph and the frequently bemused help of the locals, she works to record and publish her findings, while coal barons and their lackeys try to take the land and rugged mountain man Aidan Quinn watches first with disapproval, then with admiration.There's the makings of a good story here, in the historically-based recording of folk music and the growing respect Lily has for the mountain community.
The film is best when people are singing those old songs, filled with love and sorrow and death, turning the age-old airs into their own personal catharsis.
I love people and this was a film i though was about real people not perfect people just real I loved the school teachers ideas of heading so far in the mountains that you would have to pump in sun shine yet still so nervous she had every spot of her surroundings covered, all i really want to say is this is a clean ,fun and very true to life movie , my family was part of those mountains , heck i just felt right at home being the baby of ten!
well hope you take time to watch it i found it by mistake and loved it oh i really just was able to set back and enjoy, thank you JanetThank goodness the music got out to the city folks..
My people come from the mountains, I love English folk song and mountain music, and so I tried REAL hard to like this movie.
I guarantee that the only people giving this movie a rating of 10 worked on the film in some way.The movie starts out decently enough, but it soon becomes obvious that the film falls victim to an all too common fate with musical productions: singing > acting.
There are no less than 3 useless subplots to this film including an absurd lesbian thread and a whole two minutes devoted to the tragedy of one mountain family in particular, which resolves so abruptly and ridiculously that the tragedy is more comical than tear-inducing.Speaking of abrupt, the film ends out of nowhere, which is actually beneficial since it's so horrible.If you have a background in folk songs and American music origins, blah blah, sit down, ignore the awful film-making and enjoy the songs.
A somewhat flawed telling of a solid but esoteric story built on a foundation of authentic mountain music, "Songcatcher", a film too much in tune with its feminine side,  features good performances, a too delicate execution, and some wonderful hillbilly music.
She appreciates the wonderful nature of the music, that it relates to these peoples' daily lives, at both good and bad times.
Even taking this into consideration though, it seems like a good character progression would have brought her from being straight laced, to having a true appreciation for the music, its history, and its expression of the daily lives of these people that haven't changed much over 200 years.
Look beyond the plot and acting, delve into the scenery, hill billy images and the music, and discover for yourself a very memorable movie..
The story is engaging, about a musicologist (played masterfully by Janet McTeer, also outstanding in this year's Dogma 95 film, "The King is Alive") who discovers a connection between British folk songs and the music of the "mountain folk" in Appalachia.
This movie is supposed to be about the collection of folk music from an identified section of the "Southern Mountains," or Appalachia.In typical Hollywood fashion, it presents the people of this land as hard-drinking, suspicious of outsiders, bearing kids as kids and fundamental Christian extremists.The whole point of this movie is not about collecting songs but to make the viewer sympathetic to the lesbian relationship between the two teachers.
The movie should have an R rating at a minimum because of the gross lesbian love making scene in this film.
the music was good and I am buying the soundtrack....but I have rarely seen such a mess on the big screen....a shame really...these mountain people (my ancestors) deserve a masterpiece.
A good movie about great mountain music.
In one scene, Lily rebukes her love interest as being like all the other men on the mountain, only wanting to sit around all day and play music.
Even though this film is hard on the menfolk, what makes it a delight is the way Lily is won over by the Mountain music and how she comes to appreciate the Mountain People and their peculiar ways.
I was hoping for a movie that focused more on the music and less on the characters, instead it was the other way around.
I loved the music, characters, storyline, scenery and everything else about this film.
A movie whose lapses are worth squirming through-- Janet McTeer is a spectacle even when she's speaking clunkers, Aidan Quinn gives his best line-readings in years, and Jane Adams confirms here that she may be the best young character-actress in American film.
I've also read that the soundtrack is nothing like the music in the movie, with professional musicians filling in for the actors..
I'm suspicious when a director like Maggie Greenwald comes up with a novel and exciting idea and some great song repertory for a film about an important music-making experience - and then ends up with this.
Is a movie about a liberated woman who's lifeblood is music and recording songs and categorizing them - who thinks like a scientist and learns to really LOVE the subject she's analyzing - but who then suddenly "gives it all up" because she's found true love in the hills, is this acceptable?
The music is wonderful, however so buy the soundtrack and skip the movie (fine performance by Pat Carroll, however)..
Songcatcher appropriates the real life story of Alan Lomax, transforms Lomax into a woman, shifts his career into an earlier period in the 20th Century, adds lesbianism to its uninteresting plot and wastes valuable time that could have been devoted to the music of Appalachia.
I wish the movie had made more use of her voice in presenting the music instead of having it sung by folks representing the local population.
"Songcatcher" is a corny movie with beautiful music.Writer/director Maggie Greenwald may have researched the roots of Appalachian music, but I would have liked to learn more about how they were really discovered by musicologists than this confusing mix of romance and cultural exploitation.Janet McTeer was so good in "Tumbleweeds" that her odd body language and facial expressions must have been at the director's request.
The audience couldn't help but laugh when McTeer was referred to as the actress' Jane Adams' "big sister." Aidan Quinn, one of my favorite actors, is playing a similar role as in "The Playboys"; hey that's worth my admission money.But the soundtrack is the reason to see the movie.
How many times will you see Taj Mahal and Iris DeMent in a movie about the roots of folk music?
Others she must just listen to and record lyrics and music on paper.Emmy Rossum, classically trained singer ('Phantom, 2004) and about 13 during filming, is Deladis Slocumb, who sings many of the songs for Lily.Aidan Quinn is Tom Bledsoe, local who had been educated off the mountain, but returned there for the simple life and making music.The movie captured my attention and my imagination from the very first scenes.
For anyone who appreciates music and its origins, a very nice movie..
The story centers around Janet McTeer(Professor Lily Penteric)who finds a treasure of songs, in rural mountain surroundings, and sets out to document them.
A good music film!.
I loved the music, the cinematography, the acting, the sound, the production, but I was really disappointed in this film because it is nothing more than pro-lesbian propaganda.