Woodstock broke the pop culture mould; that’s a given. Three days of peace and music at Max Yasgur’s farm was like nothing that ever came before or after, for that matter. It rocked the world and defined a generation. That’s no overstatement. For some it was the height of peace and love era, the standard by which future generations were entertained and social moods measured. For others it was a cash cow that paved the way for the commercialisation of the flower power generation. Altamont came later but that’s another, darker story.
As important as Woodstock was and is, it is surprising that a major feature film has only now been made. Michael Wadley’s 1970 documentary laid it out in an engaging and thorough way over 181 fascinating minutes, a tough thing to match.
Ang Lee’s film focuses on the transformation of a small town in upstate New York when thousands of hippies came to play and stepped into the iconography of pop. Lee leads us from what was a bucolic rural dairy community to the centre of the universe, without focusing on the music and stars there.
Eliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) suggests Eliot Tiber, who got the show of a lifetime to come to his hometown of White Lake and in doing so, made history. Taking Woodstock is also about Tiber’s personal transformation. He was a failed, closeted artist who left his dreams behind in Manhattan to run his parents scruffy Catskills motel and then stumbled into greatness.
Lee’s characters run the gamut of anti-hippie local yahoos to trippy, naked arts troupes to seriously turned on and tuned out druggies. The charismatic, fiercely entrepreneurial concert chief Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) who gently seduces the townsfolk to do his bidding and approve the show. Billy (Emile Hirsch) is a Vietnam veteran with little to do in his hometown but take drugs and pretend to have shell shock. Eliot’s parents are as miserable with their lives, poverty, and limitations. We meet lots of colourful, interesting characters along the way and somehow all of them, major and minor, are transformed by what happened in August of 1969.
The film is lively, interesting, fun, and elucidating. It is pure candy for nostalgia buffs – and what a thought – the kids in the flower chains, long hair, and jeans (déjà vu all over again, hello 2009) – are elderly now! We get the sense that these were the lucky ones and that by not attending Woodstock, we missed the parade. It’s delightful to be in the trenches with these wide eyed kids.
It’s ambitious and detailed, a huge practical undertaking for a director requiring the perfect locations, the right looks and the right social feeling of the time as well as the ability to move masses of people while telling a complex story. There is also significant creative attention to drug experiences. All of this is dead on.
The film’s precision may be the reason it falls flat emotionally. It seems at an arm’s length, with little of the heart we have come to expect from Lee. Taking Woodstock is as far from Brokeback Mountain as it gets.
Shocking truths are revealed particularly regarding Eliot’s mother, but nothing and no one tears at our hearts as did Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, or the shattered families in The Ice Storm.
Taking Woodstock is perhaps too controlled, too exact to describe a vast and earth-shaking event.
Taking Woodstock
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