We first became aware of Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music back in 2000, when the Coen Brothers' released O Brother, Where Art Thou? After listening to the old-timey music on the soundtrack, we pondered just what we should call that stuff so we could seek out more of it. Was it country music? Bluegrass? Folk? The key factor, at the time, was we wanted to hear the original recordings and not a modern artist's take on those songs. A friend lent us the "Anthology," and after listening to one song, (Dick Justice's "Henry Lee") we knew we had found just what we were looking for. Reading Harry Smith's unique liner notes, in which the subjects of most of the songs were reduced to two or three cryptic sentences, lead to a mini obsession with the music and its creators, which in turn lead to us reading Greil Marcus's Invisible Republic, from which the film The Old Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music takes its name.

We're not unique in becoming slightly obsessed with The Anthology, and this film, which combines talking head interviews with live performances from a series of tribute concerts, is proof of that. And yet, it's a frustrating viewing experience. Many of the interviews are interesting, if a little too anecdotal, as they try to explain the enigma that is Harry Smith. David Johansen's description of the man, for example, in which he explains that Smith was a painter, a musician, a filmmaker, and a collector of string, is amusing--but we never do find out about that string collection.

But the real frustration comes in director Rani Singh's constantly cutting the performance bits short. He only shows full performances from a handful of the artists that appear in the film (which include Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, and Beck, among others). Elvis Costello's opinions about these old songs are enlightening and dead on, but they'd be just as interesting if Singh allowed Costello's entire performance of "Butcher Boy" to finish before interrupting it to hear him talk about it. Throughout the film, it seems like any time someone starts to discuss something really interesting, a song performance starts, and when a song is about to hit its peak, an interview cuts in. This is true of the contemporary performances, as well as the archival footage. (Let us see Clarence Ashley sing something all the way through!)

Which is the basic problem with the movie: It wants to be too many things at once, and ends up not covering enough of any of its subjects. As a portrait of Harry Smith, it leaves a lot out. As a cultural history of American folk music and the influence of The Anthology, it just scratches the surface (you'll learn little more about the music and artists than you would just reading Smith's far more amusing liner notes), and as a concert film, it is nothing but frustrating. We imagine some of this can be explained by the existence of The Harry Smith Project Live, which does include full length performances from the artists featured in the film. As a double feature, the movie and concert DVD compliment each other beautifully, but as a stand-alone film, The Old, Weird America falls short.

The Old, Weird America screens again at the Kabuki on Wednesday, May 2nd, at 3:45pm.