Down From the
Mountain and Songcatcher
Down From the Mountain on DVD |
Songcatcher on DVD |
Mountain music is hot right now. The
best-selling country album for 2001 was the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?,
the Coen brothers' antic recasting of The Odyssey as the tale of convicts on the
lam in 1930s Mississippi. The album of acoustic performances of traditional
"hillbilly" music from the film has sold four million copies with practically no
airplay support from country radio.
Soundtrack producer T Bone Burnett isn't surprised. "I
had high hopes for it because we had a broadcast medium that wasn't dependent on the power
structure in Nashville," he said. "I thought, if people hear this music they'll
like it, because it's good."
It is good, thanks -- in no small part -- to
Burnett's own canny choices for matching performer to material. The big breakout hit from
the film, "Man of Constant Sorrow," was sung by Dan Tyminski in a voice that had
the authentic lonesome twang personified by Ralph Stanley, who himself contributed the
powerful ballad "Oh Death."
Somewhere in the process of promoting the film, it occurred
to Burnett to produce a concert with the film's musicians. As a result, a special benefit
performance in support of the Country Music Hall of Fame was scheduled for the Grand Ol'
Opry's fabled Ryman auditorium. Down From the Mountain documents that gala.
What I found refreshing about the film is that it's not
just a record of the actual performance but more a celebration of it. We get views of the
rehearsals, interspersed with backstage dramas (and backstage tedium, as well), individual
interviews with the participants, and unguarded moments in the lives of these remarkable
musicians. And, of course, we also get the concert, which is all the more powerful for the
way we now feel we know these people who make the music.
The film is packed with intimate touches, which I found
endearing. There's Ralph Stanley, who after more than sixty years of stardom, remains as
down-to-earth and humble as a man could possibly be. Responding to a question about how
what he does is different from what Bill Monroe did, Stanley forthrightly declares,
"I don't think I sing bluegrass. I think what I do is older than that."
He's right. Monroe fused the instrumental virtuosity of
jazz to a core of country leavened with a generous dollop of the blues a mere 60 years
ago, while Stanley's ballads and singing style are relics of a tradition hundreds of years
old.
There's also a beautiful moment with the Fairfield Four
relaxing backstage. Isaac Freeman, speaking in a voice deep as the bedrock, opines,
"If you want to hear something beautiful, you go to one of these old country Baptist
churches on a Sunday, and you'll hear it like it's been done for years." The other
members of the group nod and concur, "That's right," "You know it,"
"Umm hnnh." These five guys make music even when they're just BS-ing backstage.
There's a lovely insight into Emmylou Harris' playful side.
Apparently she subscribes to a wireless baseball subscription service that beams
play-by-play updates straight to her beeper. As she's called to the stage, it beeps and
she pauses to announce, "Uh-oh! Milwaukee's got a man on second," before
answering her curtain call.
And there's a sobering moment when a tired-looking John
Hartford matter-of-factly mentions his health problems, "Before my cancer got bad, I
used to sit out in front of the wheelhouse and watch the tugs pulling empty barges come
around this point on the river . . ." Minutes later, dressed in his stage clothes and
in front of an audience, he's a changed man. As a fan, I'm glad I got a chance to see how
much of a restorative performing was for Hartford.
By the time we get to the concert footage, the performers
seem like good friends. It's a shock to see them once again from our usual perspective as
spectators, but we have great seats for a really special show. The DVD captures it all
with a brilliant widescreen image that is completely saturated with color, as well as an
enveloping, extremely realistic, surround soundtrack. Down From the Mountain makes
for a completely enjoyable evening.
Songcatcher is a completely different kettle of
fish, but if you enjoyed the music in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and by extension,
DFTM, you'll be fascinated by the story Songcatcher has to tell. Sometime
before the World War I, Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer), a musicologist who specializes
in the Elizabethan ballad, is passed over for tenure at an unnamed university. Irate, she
needs to get out of town, so she visits her sister Elna (Jane Adams), a teacher in rural
Appalachia.
When one of her sister's students, Deladis (Emmy Rossum),
sings one of her "love songs," Penleric recognizes it immediately as a lineal
descendent of her beloved Elizabethan ballads. Inflamed with the realization that she has
found her ticket to academic success, Penlyric takes to traveling through the remote
mountain passes, cumbersome recording gear in tow, collecting and transcribing song after
song.
Along the way she witnesses the almost unbelievable poverty
of the rural mountain region, while experiencing the generosity of its people. She also
runs into at least one mountain man, Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn), who is deeply suspicious
of her motives and who demands that she not exploit the people who are giving her their
music.
The film is graced with phenomenal acting from its entire
cast. Most impressive, if simply because she appears in nearly every scene of the film, is
Janet McTeer. Her performance as the proud, stubborn Penleric is filled with subtle
characterization. Her aloof determination is gradually replaced with an almost rapturous
joy as she falls in love with, first the music and then the people who make it. Why isn't
this woman more widely known? She's ten times the actress of any of the pretty little
things who pull down five million per film in those blockbusters filling the mall
googolplexes. Oh, who knows? Just don't miss this performance.
Pat Carroll's performance as Viney Butler -- first a
source, later a friend -- almost steals the picture from McTeer, however. As the
unofficial "mayor" of the mountains -- part witch, part midwife, part mother
figure - she shows an inexorable ball of energy, ceaselessly cheerful despite a life of
grinding poverty.
Aidan Quinn's Tom Bledsoe is also totally believable. Twice
widowed, a man who'd been down to "the other world" and returned, he's deeply
suspicious of Penleric. He's been patronized and exploited his whole life and is unwilling
to trust any flatlander, no matter how well-meaning she seems.
Any reader of romance novels -- or even of Jane Austen --
will immediately recognize that these two combatants will end the film as lovers, but the
two actors make their characters so real that we never question their romance when it
develops.
As the plot unfolds, it flows directly out of the people we
have come to know through the subtle, intensely believable characterizations. Yes, things
get a bit melodramatic, but the film avoids stereotyping. People behave according to their
(totally plausible) natures.
And, at the end of the film, when an academic rushes to
join Dr. Penleric in her important academic work, she is able to respond, her voice filled
with wonder at the realization, "I discovered I was more interested in the people
than the songs they sang." It takes a strong woman to realize that -- and a powerful
film to make us see it as a victory.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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