Throwback Thursday-Songcatcher (2000)

Sometimes in life, when we are denied opportunities via a conventional manner, we must create opportunities in an unconventional manner.

The late Shirley Chisholm summed it up best:

“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”

In the 2000 movie, Songcatcher, Professor Lily Penleric, PhD (Janet McTeer) is denied a promotion at the school where she teaches. Feeling like she has to get away for a while, Lily visits her sister, Eleanor Penleric (Jane Adams) who runs a rural school in Appalachia. There she makes a discovery that could take her career to a new level: ancient Irish-Scottish ballads that have been handed down from parent to child over the generations. Because the community is isolated, the songs have remained untouched and unknown by the outside world.

While Lily starts to collect the songs and use them as a mean to secure the previously turned down promotion, she starts to appreciate not just the land, but the people who call the area home. She also meets Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn), a local war hero and musician who challenges Lily on her reasons for wanting to share the music with the world.

This movie is one of those movies that is underappreciated from my perspective. It’s not a huge spectacle of a movie with grand special effects, but that’s ok. Sometimes I just want to watch a movie with human characters telling a human story.

I recommend it.

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