The Songcatcher

Poster Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn

Netflix might prove expensive for us if we keep wanting to order the movies to buy after seeing them. One more joins that list. Netflix is cheap, an excellent way to see a lot of good films, but how could I see The Songcatcher only once?

The plot is a framework for us to get to know the people of Appalachia and the music that runs through their blood. Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a musicology professor at a university in the early 1900s, is frustrated by the limitations of her position-- talented, hard-working women don't get made full professors. She is in a dead-end affair with a married man, a full professor, more interested in bedding her than helping her.

So Lily takes a leave of absence to visit her sister who is teaching at a small school in the hills of Kentucky. When she gets there, she is astounded to hear the music these people's ancestors brought with them from their native homes in Ireland, Scotland and England (Emmy Rossum plays a young mountain girl). Music is part of their soul and Lily starts out to collect those songs, these wonderful lyrics, far purer than any available elsewhere with her intent to put them into a book.

For those of us who love hill music, real folk songs, the sounds of dulcimers (I have one Farm Boss made many years ago), banjos and fiddles, the singing of songs that tell stories of a hardscrabble life that wasn't easy when they came and won't get better but has left them with a richness money can't buy, those things let us have two hours sharing something we will never really know personally but can feel deep inside.

The Songcatcher is about music, about culture, nature, beauty, about finding the freedom to let go and be ourselves. It is also about a love whose name must not be spoken and about a love that doesn't come conveniently but cannot be denied. I had not seen Pat Carroll in years but she plays a wonderful, old mountain woman, Viney Butler, talk about spunk and spirit.

The film takes Lily from the fine lady with a lot of self and society imposed limitations to a woman who can strip down to her basic elements as she stubbornly digs her toes into mountain soil. A beautiful film on all levels, it's one of those little independents that often flies under the radar but should not. Movies like this one enrich and help us grow as people-- and do it with great joy.

If you haven't seen it, I heartily recommend it. If you have, but it's been awhile, rent it again or maybe like me-- buy it. It took an award for best ensemble film in 2000 and with good reason. All the characters in this film are rich and fully portrayed even when they are onscreen very little real time. They are part of the fabric of the tale.

Jane Adams and Katherine Kerry from The Songcatcher