When she performs the old ballad "Barbara Allen" for one of her seminars she tells the class, "You must learn to appreciate not only the sociological value but also the simple purity of emotion in the song." There's a palpable sense of great-lady highhandedness in her talk. Lily is the "songcatcher" of the title; when she starts pumping the mountain folk for the songs that have been handed down over the years, she's too excited by her discoveries to have any sense of wooing the people she needs to win over if she's to proceed with her musical archaeology.

But for all of writer-director Maggie Greenwald's earnest good intentions, the picture is awash in a contemporary version of Lily's superiority. You can hear it in the caricatured accents she allows her actors to get away with, in the way she peoples the cast with genuine articles like the country singer Iris DeMent or the bluesman Taj Mahal and doesn't give them anything to do. You can sense it in the movie's fawning attitude toward the purity of folk art. "Songcatcher" is like an "All Things Considered" report on "a vibrant and lasting folk tradition" that goes on for two hours. It's so relentlessly, goddamn worthy that you long for some cheapness and dirt, some energetic pop trash to liven it up.

Greenwald can't be satisfied with telling a story. She means to enlighten and uplift; the whole conception of the movie has more than a touch of liberal noblesse oblige. Her approach never lets you forget how the movie is intended or who it's intended for: "Songcatcher" is presented as a little countrified artifact for educated urbanite audiences to coo over in the midst of their rootless modern lives. Watching is like seeing a dulcimer plunked down in an Ikea display.

After Lily is once again turned down for tenure at the college where she teaches, she decides to spend the summer visiting her sister Elna (Jane Adams) in the Appalachian community where Elna and another woman (E. Katherine Kerr) have set up a school. Her first night there she's stunned to hear Deladis (I swear that's her name; she's played by Emmy Rossum), the teenage orphan who lives with them, sing "Barbara Allen." Deladis isn't the only one who's grown up with these songs, and soon Lily is hunting them down. The most abundant source is an old woman named Viney Butler (Pat Carroll). But Lily runs into an obstacle when she meets Viney's grandson Tom (Aidan Quinn), who is sure that Lily is exploiting the community. He's certain that bringing the songs to the attention of the outside world will bring an end to the mountain ways.

	Songcatcher Written and directed by Maggie Greenwald Starring Janet McTeer, Aidan Quinn, Jane Adams, Pat Carroll, E. Katherine Kerr, Emmy Rossum Print story E-mail story

It's hard not to agree with Lily that she deserves the little money she'll make from the endeavor because she's the one doing the work and bearing the expenses; among other things, she arranges for the people she interviews to be recorded singing their songs on Edison cylinders. She wants to make the public aware that people they consider ignorant hillbillies have a rich culture of their own, and she's right when she says that unless the traditions are recorded and written down they will die out.

But she's so brusque and unlikable that it's nearly impossible to work up any sympathy for her. When a woman makes her a present of songs she's written down over the years, Lily turns them down, saying they're of no use to her because they haven't been scientifically recorded. Greenwald might have used Lily's brusqueness to complicate our response to her. But the relationship between Lily and the mountain people doesn't develop; suddenly they've just accepted her. And the only thing that softens Tom's attitude toward her is that the two become lovers. One roll in the woods and his concerns about his community's being exploited are no longer spoken.

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