Neither director Ang Lee nor his writer and frequent collaborator James Schamus were at Woodstock when it occurred. This bodes well for their Woodstock movie. No, really.
For most of us, history’s most well-remembered music festival is a cultural myth, a distant event that we know about but can’t touch. With Taking Woodstock, the story about the formation of the whole thing, Ang Lee is less concerned with the facts as he is with the myth: how the three-day romp supposedly changed the lives of those who attended.
Taking Woodstock begins with a standard plot but ends with a more abstract idea of what the movie is about. It begins, as you would expect, with a behind-the-scenes look at how the sleepy town of Bethel, New York came to host the hippie gathering of the century when Elliot Teichberg, the young New Yorker tending after his parents’ run-down motel for the summer, invites the Woodstock’s organizers. There’s the venue procuring, the headquarters building, dealing with press and bigots—these troubles tease, but never pursue. They are quickly discarded with a casual shrug. Hey, man, trust the universe, man, and it’ll all sort itself out. I feel it, man.
Conflict? What conflict? If extorted by the mob, an ex-marine transvestite Liev Schreiber will serendipitously appear, offering his friendship and protection. Townspeople forming an opposition? How are they going to shoo off half a million hippies? “That’s what the police said! Before they laughed us off like children,” they whine, before quietly disappearing from the rest of the film.
I’m sure there are people curious for a real look at how it all went down, but that takes away from Schamus and Lee’s chosen interpretation of Woodstock as an instigator of personal journey. Throughout the festival, Elliot finds the courage to be more open with his homosexuality and more honest with his parents. He’s played by hipster comedian Demetri Martin, who brings his odd confused charm to the role, give a few dramatic looks.
It’s a wafty film, in terms of its use of stock characters and lame life slogans, but it endears itself many times over just by embracing the spirit of the myth. For the most part, Lee ignores or glosses over the social and political climate of the era, choosing to, as the Woodstock people did, exist in a psychedelic bubble in which all kinds of war and hate are things to be banished, not solved. Maybe that’s why this is one of the most pro-drugs, pro-free love movie to come out in a while. There are no cons shown to any of their behavior. On the contrary, all the drugs and sex contribute to character growth.
Even more wacky is the film’s treatment of money. In true hippie manner, Taking Woodstock is green versus green. It demonizes money as a homewrecker (particularly in Imelda Staunton’s screechy but convincing performance as Elliot’s greedy mom) and encourages a commune system (happy people sharing food, giving away free drugs). In one scene, Eugene Levy, playing the farmer who owns the land, decries his fellow townsfolk for daring to charge money for water. Elliot’s mistake of declaring the festival free is treated as a positive thing. At the same time, thousands of dollars are thrown around like nothing in order to ensure Woodstock happening, almost as if to devalue cash further. I suppose you can’t put a price tag on grooviness, is the message. That would be an excellent excuse if the movie bombs at the box office.
We never see any of the concert itself and rock tunes are minimal in the film’s soundtrack (it’s scored by Danny Elfman instead)—because that’s the Woodstock in concept, not the Woodstock that was. Lee cements the “standing in the periphery of greatness” approach by showing the characters transfixed by reports surrounding the moon landing. They show curiosity with as much alien bedazzlement as everyone would watching Woodstock unfold. For this reason, Lee also makes blatant references to the famous 1970 documentary Woodstock by showing Michael Wadleigh’s film crew filming random happenings (nuns with peace signs, the Post-a-Son employee, the aftermath), to highlight that Woodstock’s history is more about images than procedure.
Apollo 11 had one small step, Woodstock had mud people. Beautiful, man.
"Taking Woodstock" opens August 28, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy, Drama. Directed by Ang Lee. Written by James Schamus. Starring Dan Fogler, Emile Hirsch, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Liev Schreiber, Demetri Martin, Henry Goodman, Jonathan Groff, Eugene Levy, Imelda Staunton.
