- Being born in 1982 means that, like most of the participants in the film, I could only ever experience Woodstock secondhand as part of someone else’s anterograde cultural amnesia. As a teenager I was pretty obsessed with listening to Psychedelic Psunday and would have been fed various ideas about the cultural significance of Woodstock as built up in the mind of boomers who, if they were not actually at the event itself, were at least old enough for it to make some sort of cultural impact on their lives. The accuracy of those memories formed is not terribly relevant, of course, since Woodstock is something bigger than itself and people’s recollections of it seem to rarely have anything to do with the quality of the music. I mean, come on, when was the last time you listened to Sha Na Na?
My psychedelic tastes tend to run more towards British rather than American psychedelia and as such I never particularly understood why Woodstock was the festival to end all festivals because as far as I was concerned, it was missing a lot of important bands. It has never seemed to be about the music and that seems to be the cue this movie took by focusing mostly on things that happened behind the scenes a couple of miles down the road, with all of the music existing on the periphery as sound bites wafting over the crowds when we need the chorus of a song to underline something going on in the scene (e.g. The Band’s “I Shall Be Released” heard in the distance as Emile Hirsch’s PTSD-ing Viet Nam vet finds comfort in sliding down a muddy hill). The music is there, but it’s of lesser importance that almost everything else going on, which I suppose sums up quite nicely how I feel about Woodstock.
- Woodstock the documentary is what you want if you want to see band performances. Taking Woodstock does not set out, for the most part, to recreate anything you can see in the documentary aside from the occasional scene we see the documentary filmmakers talking to people who end up in the actual documentary (the nuns flashing the peace sign, the Port-o-San guy). I also liked that they did the split screen thing that they did in the documentary; I thought it was a nice visual nod for people who have seen the doc without being an overwhelmingly obnoxious technique for those who haven’t.
- If I had to compare this movie to another, it would be the 1985 made-for-TV movie The Fourth Wiseman starring Martin Sheen as the titular character. Artaban is the little known fourth wiseman who spends his entire life trying to catch up to Jesus but keeps getting waylaid by a variety of other people, so he’s constantly arriving places just after Jesus has left. I can’t remember if he ever actually meets up with Jesus (probably at the crucifixion), but I’m 93% sure that by the end he realises that in his quest to find Jesus, he’s actually found Jesus and Jesus’ message in the people he has stopped to help along the way. In Taking Woodstock, our protagonist Elliot tries on several occasions to make it down to Yasgur’s farm to enjoy the show he’s helped to facilitate, but every time he tries to leave he runs into someone or some experience that prevents him from getting down to the stage but still manages to represent some facet of the quintessential Woodstock experience. And, sadly, none of those experiences have anything to do with music; group nude baths, acid-tripping threesomes, and therapeutic mudslides sums the festival up better, apparently.
- I can’t really tell what sort of opinion this movie is trying to form on hippies. The start of the film seems to be very cynical about them, with Michael Lang and his band of concert promoters being painted as capitalistic overlords disguised as freewheelin’, fringe vest-wearin’ peaceniks. I was actually rather pleased with this, if only because the late sixties seem very sanitized in history as being about peace and love and blah blah blah while everyone ignores the mountains of cash needed to put on an event like this. I thought the team of suits following Lang and his co-promoter around were kind of hysterical; there seems to be very little that is organic about this festival, which is at odds with cultural memory about the event. But as the movie progresses, it slides back into the “They’re just sweet kids having fun!” approach that everyone is more familiar with. At one point, Max Yasgur even says that he hasn’t heard that many pleases and thank-yous in a long time. The movie turns into this love in (har har, pun intended) for the love generation and maybe it’s just me and my more cynical approach to things, but it kind of makes me ill. It’s just too damn nostalgic.
- As a sidenote, at the end Elliot asks Lang what he’s going to do next and Lang talks about the ultimate free concert he’s throwing in a couple of months’ time in California and, like, it’s going to feature the Rolling Stones. The Stones, man. He doesn’t have to say it, of course, but before he even mentions the Stones you can feel the word “Altamont” hanging overhead, trying to squash all the good vibes and post-festival glow. It felt like they inserted it as a way to illustrate that Woodstock was the “good” festival of 1969, and yet there’s something about Altamont that has always felt much more in tune with the late 1960s to me than Woodstock. But, again, I’m cynical.
- Emile Hirsch’s character was mostly unnecessary. For once I’d like to see a Viet Nam vet who doesn’t spend all his screen time PTSD-ing all over the place. I suppose I have my beloved Martin Scorsese to thank for introducing this kind of character to the world and dozens of other filmmakers for replicating it over and over, but when it doesn’t add anything to the movie I just find it obnoxious.
- Also, Emile Hirsch could pass for Jack Black. o_O
- Other 1960s tropes that need to die: nude theatre troops. I’d guess that the merkin budget for this film was pretty high.
- Someone on IMDB was wondering about the point of Vilma’s character and said:
I will admit though, that Vilma does have the key line in the movie when she tells Elliot “Why don’t you go see what the center of the Universe looks like” but it could have just as easily been uttered by a one-eyed paraplegic midget with much the same effect.
OMG. Wow.
- Mamie Gummer was oddly enjoyable in this. There’s something about her facial features that seems to fit right in with the look of what casting directors and costumers have decided hippie chicks look like and I thought she was understated without coming across as lazy or stoned like everyone else.
- Mostly, this just feels unremarkable. It hasn’t made me terribly interested in any of the people or stories of Woodstock, just interested in digging up my old Woodstock cassette tape that I’m pretty sure is in a shoebox under the passenger seat in my parents’ car. The greatest hits approach of that cassette is all the Woodstock I need; one song by each of the major artists, and none of the other counter-cultural baggage that bogs down my enjoyment of this festival.
Taking Woodstock
Damn hippies.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A man working at his parents' motel in the Catskills inadvertently sets in motion the generation-defining concert in the summer of 1969.
That’s exactly where that tape is, Eric and I were trying to find music when he was home and we raided the shoe box while driving.
I was 13 when Woodstock happened and wanted to join my mother who had tickets but never made it due to the traffic.
The event epitomized the times. The movie is more a telling of Elliot’s story and a homage to the event that shaped the world after it. Some of the ‘characters’ that don’t fit are from his telling of his perspective of the event and Vilma was a link to his openly gay life style before he moved back to Bethel.
The event acts as the catharsis Elliot needed to leave his controlling mother, much as it was the event that showed the counter culture movement could move into the main stream without a bloody revolution.
Oh no, I get all that, I just think it still fails as a story. The movie depends on the phenomenon of Woodstock to draw you into a story that isn’t all that engaging and doesn’t have that much to do with the festival. I think it also depends on people having myopic sentimentality for the period; Woodstock altering the world all depends on what your world started out as and whether you were in a place that needed altering.