Songcatcher (1999) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy) and Tuna

Great idea, humanistic attitude, beautiful and authentic music. Do you need more?

A story? Well, that couldn't be much worse, so just ignore it. It isn't necessary anyway. It really doesn't get in the way of the concert. I was able to see how bad the story was and still liked the film a lot.

For the record: a pompous, condescending musicologist comes to the backwoods and starts archiving the local songs. She eventually comes to love the locals. In terms of the script, this one-dimensional film has every possible cliche: 

• the condescending attitude of the male professors toward her discovery

• the lesbians

• the lyin', cheatin' husbands

• the women abandoned to despair by lyin', cheatin' husbands (have you determined yet that the script was written by a woman)

• the shifty coal company official tryin' to hornswaggle the honest mountain folk out of their land

• the coal company owner who refers to the mountaineers as savages

• the fact that the simple folk turn out to have true wisdom and intelligence 

• the scene where the retarded-lookin' bumpkin plays his musical instrument better than Eric Clapton

• the ol' black musician

• the loveable, feisty ol' grannie who says stuff like "you boys is actin' like a right buncha assholes"

• the moonshine stills

• the city musicologist who falls in love with the sensitive country bumpkin

• numerous tragedies, calamities, and melodramas

Watching this without the singing would be like watching Oklahoma! without the singing. Not only that, but it's pretty goddamn uplifting and worthy, and does more preaching than Sunday morning cable TV. 

But frankly, I don't really know if it makes sense to say that the movie would be bad without the music, because the singing and pluckin' is the whole point, and the music is there to enjoy. 

So enjoy it. I did.

DVD Info

• Widescreen anamorphic, 1.85:1

• Full-length director commentary

• three deleted scenes

Songcatcher (2000) is a Maggie Greenwald film about a female musicologist who is passed over for a full professorship at an anonymous eastern private college, and joins her sister at a mountain "settlement school" in the mountains. There she discovers a musical tradition going back to ancient English and Scottish ballads, literally unchanged from when their ancestors first immigrated.

The story is set at the turn of the century, which is several years early for this discovery, but nonetheless is based on an historical event that marked the beginning of country and western music. In a good commentary track, Greenwald explains exactly where she took artistic license with the true story, and why. Where she didn't take any license at all was in the music, which was performed exactly as collected in the 20s.

The initial settlement of the mountain folk was prompted as much by coal mining companies as anything. Missionaries lived among them, and started schools to turn the hill folks into modern citizens. There were also lay settlement schools, privately owned, which had the goal of educating, but preserving the local culture. The musicologist, played by Janet McTeer, gradually manages to become accepted by the suspicious local residents and starts collecting this amazing work. Meanwhile, we learn that her sister, played by Jane Adams, is in a lesbian relationship with the director of the school. The writer/director essentially doesn't believe that all school teachers were sexless old spinsters, and wanted to give them some sexuality. In fact, she created a love interest of some kind for every woman in the film. The musicologist herself ends up falling for one of these crude hill folk.

I adored this film, but then it is decidedly my sort of film. The scenery was breathtaking, and the performances very convincing. I also enjoyed the cultural insights. Overall, however, it was the music that carried the story. As a 60s vintage folk aficionado, I recognized most of the songs in the film as the ones that influenced people like Joan Baez, The Kingston Trio, and Bob Dylan. Taj Mahal even stopped in long enough to write and perform a traditional sounding banjo piece.