OK, first off, Nell's lakeside idyll is a TVA lake, made for generating hydroelectric power in the 1940's. So much for untouched by civilization. And where'd they come up with the idea that twentieth-century mountain people practiced these crude bronze age cave burials? Bogus and manipulative all the way through, it's a patronizing rip-off even without its condescending and wholly fraudulent ideas about Appalachian history. Jodie Foster tries desperately to gimp her way to an Academy Award, and surprisingly, it didn't work (unlike Dustin Hoffman's one-note performance in Rain Man or Al Pacino's self-parody in Scent of a Woman). Michael Apted should know better, having done a half-decent job portraying mountain life in Coal Miner's Daughter. An altogether horrible film, the worse for its pretensions and delivering some "profound" truths.