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altivoWatched and immensely enjoyed. Recommended to anyone who loves the old folk music of the British Isles and the rural parts of North America. The time was about 1908, and Dr. Lily Penleric, a musicologist at an eastern university in the US, had just been passed over for a promotion to full professor. She takes the summer off and travels to North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains, where her sister Eleanor is operating a school. Horrified by the primitive conditions, Dr. Penleric is nonetheless almost immediately captivated by the musical traditions of the isolated mountain people she encounters. Soon she is engrossed in the transcription and collection of their 'love songs', which she believes are virtually unchanged from the singing and traditions of their Scotch-Irish immigrant forebears 200 years earlier.
Tragedies and love stories ensue, of course. The music is accurately depicted and runs through the entire story like a golden thread. Despite the usual disclaimers, this fictionalized account is based in part on true incidents. After Dr. Penleric's considerable work is destroyed in a fire deliberately set by two local men, she leaves its reconstruction to a colleague from England, Cyrus Whittle. This must be based on the life of Cecil J. Sharp, who collected ballads in England then later came to the Appalachian area of the US to continue his work.
I believe this film is an accurate, and sometimes wrenching protrayal of life among the rural mountain folk a century ago, and worthy of attention for its historic presentation of the effect of a lesbian relationship on a small community at that time and the nobility that people ultimately display in picking up the pieces of shattered lives and moving onward. And of course, the music, I did mention the music didn't I?
This indy production was a winner in the Sundance Film Festival. Made in 1999.
Rating:
four and a half apples out of a possible five.
--Tivo
Tragedies and love stories ensue, of course. The music is accurately depicted and runs through the entire story like a golden thread. Despite the usual disclaimers, this fictionalized account is based in part on true incidents. After Dr. Penleric's considerable work is destroyed in a fire deliberately set by two local men, she leaves its reconstruction to a colleague from England, Cyrus Whittle. This must be based on the life of Cecil J. Sharp, who collected ballads in England then later came to the Appalachian area of the US to continue his work.
I believe this film is an accurate, and sometimes wrenching protrayal of life among the rural mountain folk a century ago, and worthy of attention for its historic presentation of the effect of a lesbian relationship on a small community at that time and the nobility that people ultimately display in picking up the pieces of shattered lives and moving onward. And of course, the music, I did mention the music didn't I?
This indy production was a winner in the Sundance Film Festival. Made in 1999.
Rating:
four and a half apples out of a possible five.
--Tivo
