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List Price: $14.98 | | Label: Lions Gate
Salesrank: 8133
Released: October 23, 2001 |
| Our Price: $8.53 |
| Used Price: $8.11 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
When musicologist Doctor Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) is passed over for a prominent teaching position, she leaves the city to visit her sister in the beautifully rugged mountains of Appalachia. It is here she discovers a wellspring of emotional tunes passed down from the original Irish and Scottish immigrants who settled in these parts. Determined to document the history of the songs, she immerses herself in mountain life, falls in love with a local musician, Aidan Quinn, and is profoundly changed by the generosity, strength, and freedom of the fiercely proud mountain people.
Description of Songcatcher:
Hauntingly beautiful folk music and stunning Appalachian scenery take center stage in this winner of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for outstanding ensemble performance. Musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric has a deep love of English folk ballads. After a humiliating failure to make full professor, she heads off to visit her sister's tiny school in rural Appalachia and finds herself in folk music central. Lily is entranced, but the locals are suspicious of the outlander's motivations. Issues of tolerance, clashing cultures, and Big Bad Men abound, but Songcatcher wisely focuses on the music. Janet McTeer does fine with the "repressed academic gets in touch with the earth" role, but her truly outstanding work is in revealing scholar Lily's rapture in her discoveries. McTeer leads a truly great cast, including the wonderful Pat Carroll, and a just-for-the-hell-of-it cameo by bluesman Taj Mahal. Songcatcher has a healthy respect for the mountain people it portrays, and an absolute reverence for their music. --Ali Davis
Songcatcher Reviews:
Songcatcher 
2008-06-03 - Songcatcher is both an interesting drama and a showcase for some excellent singing. One of the songs is about a man who has no land of his own and thus cannot court a wife; he imaginatively describes his longing in the song. Viewers with open minds are recommended to this film.
pure enjoyment
2008-05-03 - story of a music professor in search of original mountain music in the Appalachian Mountains. Old songs sung and played as they were either written or passed down. Music played on fiddle, banjo's & Mountain dulcimer (the only musical instrument originating in the United States). Great entertainment for the lover of old time music.
Little known film
2008-04-22 - I got this movie from netflix, and was very happy I did. I was somewhat surprised by the PG-13 rating, because of the lesbian sub-plot, but the movie was incredible. I find it interesting that the only two-star ratings I noticed were because of this part of the storyline. I sometimes think that these homophobes only bother to rate movies with this type of storyline just to further their own homophobic agenda. So sad. Though I am straight, I see no problem with women loving women or men loving men. I didn't read all the reviews, but I wonder if any of them had anything derogatory to say about the man who was cheating on his wife with another women. I bet they'd have had plenty to say if he'd been cheating with another man.
Catching Songs in the Appalachians 
2008-03-23 - "Songcatcher" is the "O Sister" equivalent to the Coen brothers' "O Brother,where art thou?" Janet McTeer stars as Lily Penleric,a music professor denied full professorship due to being a woman. Fleeing the misogyny of academia,Lily joins her sister Elna (Jane Adams) There,she becomes one with Nature, meeting the generally noble natives.
In the Appalachians, there's plenty of drama. Lily discovers-to her horror- that her younger sister is romancing an older woman,Harriet (who bears an amazing resemblance to Jean Marsh in her nurse role in "Return to Oz") Lily meets the musicians (among them Iris DeMent and Taj Mahal) She also meets the alcoholic veteran Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn) At first,he's very gruff with her. Suddenly,they are enamored of each other&they're making love in the wilderness. On top of that,there's a graphic childbirth scene,as well as a love triangle. The natives are restless.
"Songcatcher" has a strong soundtrack with Emmylou Harris,Gillian Welch, Patty Loveless, Rosanne Cash and Dolly Parton. The plot is melodramatic and stereotypical--but at least it's fun. There's music in them thar hills!
Beautiful Mountain Scenery And Great Music But Film Has Some Flaws
2008-03-07 - Dr. Lily Penleric is a professor of music who, while visiting her sister Elna's settlement school in the North Carolina mountains, finds she has uncovered a treasure trove of lost English and Scotish folk ballads among the rural residents.
Lily proceeds to record these songs on phonograph cylinders as she comes into contact with local singers and musicians, such as a young girl named Deladis, wise, old Viney Butler and a talented banjo and guitar player, Tom Bledsoe, who becomes her love interest in the film.
What works about this movie is the outstanding cinematography that successfully captures the green, rugged beauty of the Southern mountains. Also the incredible music, which features classic folk songs such as "Barbara Allen" and cameo performances by Taj Mahal and Iris Dement. But the film's subplots, particularly the lesbian relationship between Elna and an older woman named Harriet as well as the unlikely romance between the intellectual, artistocratic Lily and the hard drinking, hillbilly Tom, seem extremely forced and unrealistic considering the historical and regional context of the film. Also the secondary characters lack nuance and complexity, typically shown as either having hearts of gold, like sweet, innocent Deladis, or as violent, intolerant brutes, such as Deladis' boyfriend Fate.
I have family roots going back to the early 1800's in the mountains of North Carolina and can promise you that this is definitely a simplified Hollywood version of Southern mountain life rather than a realistic portrayal of this region and it's people in the early 1900's. Still I enjoyed the music and the natural scenery so much that I would recommend it to those who likewise enjoy these two extraordinary aspects of traditional Southern mountain culture.
