D.A. Pennebaker’s great ’60s concert documentaries Monterey Pop and Don’t Look Back used the camera to turn the music into something larger, an explosive cultural statement written in bright colors, close-ups, and sometimes jarring visuals. But Down from the Mountain has all the artistry of TV news-crew footage. It’s not just the cheap shot-on-video look or the occasional lapses in the quality of lighting or focus but the frequent aimlessness as well.

The film is built around a May 2000 benefit concert for the new Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Staged in Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry, it features most of the performers who contributed music to the Coen Brothers’ movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a respinning of the Odyssey set in Depression-era Mississippi. The music in the Coens’ film and in this tribute concert is a mostly stirring collection of blues, gospel, and mountain folk — hardly the stuff major-motion-picture soundtracks are made of. Yet the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack became a surprising million-seller success.

Listeners who bought that soundtrack won’t be disappointed by the in-concert performances in Down from the Mountain, which was directed by Pennebaker, his long-time collaborator Chris Hegedus, and Nick Doob. Any opportunity to see the bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley sing — especially a song as full of dread and dust as the traditional plea " O Death " — is welcome (though someone might have suggested he take his hands out of his pockets while performing), and his formal, Old World character comes through in his off-stage dialogue. The film is also a tribute of sorts to the late John Hartford, writer of the ’60s hit " Gentle on My Mind " and a living encyclopædia of the folk music of the people who settled along the Mississippi, where he spent his last years captaining riverboats. Hartford was slowly dying of cancer when he MC’ed the concert, and his crusty humor and warm heart provide the film’s only emotional thread. The performances by Alison Krauss, Chris Thomas King, the Cox Family, and Emmylou Harris are quite fine. Gillian Welch, however, was not in good voice. And a gospel tune by kiddie group the Peasall Sisters is a worthless exhibition of country music’s painfully cutesy underbelly.

Almost as painful is most of the half-hour of backstage discussions and interviews captured during rehearsals. Few are illuminating, and they come off as failed attempts to reveal something of the nature of the performers. The concert footage, despite the winning quality of the music presented, is also stiff, approached with the imagination of a parent shooting a school play.

The stagnant appearance and mostly uninspired conversations of Down from the Mountain might be the result of a lack of planning, or maybe too much. Directing by committee, like recording an album with several producers, rarely makes for good art.