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Songcatcher

Threat advisory: Elevated - Significant risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

It is 1907 and musicologist Doctor Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) has just been denied a promotion in the male-dominated world of her university. Frustrated and determined to get academic recognition, she heads to Appalachia with a recording device and writing materials. There she joins her sister, Elna (Jane Adams), who runs a struggling rural school.

Lily then makes a startling discovery that could change her academic career. The folk songs of Scotland and Ireland have been preserved and passed down through generations of these secluded people. She sets out to record them, but her task is not an easy one. The people are wary of her, fiercely insular and protective of their mountain ways. Arriving at a volatile time when the coal companies are vying for land and swallowing up whole communities, Lily cannot help but become involved in the struggles of these people while falling in love with Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn), a rough local musician.

Theatrical propaganda posters

Target demographic movie keyword propaganda

Film period history music Appalachia university

Persons of interest

Janet McTeer .... Professor Lily Penleric PhD
Michael Davis .... Dean Arthur Pembroke
Michael Goodwin .... Professor Wallace Aldrich PhD
Greg Russell Cook .... Fate Honeycutt
Jane Adams .... Eleanor "Elna" Penleric
E Katherine Kerr .... Harriet Tolliver
Emmy Rossum .... Deladis Slocumb
Pat Carroll .... Viney Butler
Stephanie Roth Haberle .... Alice Kincaid
Aidan Quinn .... Tom Bledsoe
Bart Hansard .... Hilliard
Erin Blake Clanton .... Polly
David Patrick Kelly .... Earl Giddens
Kristin Hall .... Isabel
Michael Harding .... Reese Kincaid
Taj Mahal .... Dexter Speaks
Muse Watson .... Parley Gentry
Iris DeMent .... Rose Gentry
David Mansfield .... Composer
Maggie Greenwald .... Screenwriter
Maggie Greenwald .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film fesitvals:

Sundance Film Festival 2000: Special jury prize for outstanding ensemble performance

Studios and distributors:

Becker Entertainment

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

The Waltons without the G rating. Did you ever wonder what those Baldwin sisters were really up to?

If you want to see some people who give meaning to the expression "dirt poor" then you want to watch Songcatcher. Apart from that, the film is a drama that gets hijacked by romance. The story about a woman struggling for equality in a man's world by being more than a man's equal is subsumed into a story about a classy woman who can't live without her piece of rough. Aidan Quinn, who is normally so nice you could put him in a box and call it "Nice in a box", is a dirty but nice hillbilly with an education whose charming ways and erect penis goad Doctor Lily Penleric to throw away the months she spent recording songs and set him up as a recording artist.

Other than that there are some great character studies strung together by Janet McTeer's performance as a woman of means and mind (anyone with two changes of clothes is "of means" in the mountains). She's certainly a strong performer, as you will recall from Tumbleweeds, and she dominates every scene she's in, even the ones with Aidan, but that's not enough to save Songcatcher from a short run in the cinemas and a quick arrival at the video shop.

Security censorship classification

M (Low level violence, adult themes)

Surveillance time

108 minutes (1:48 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film: 17 October 2001