Taking Woodstock

Ang Lee is a filmmaker with many great films to his credit, including The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. His latest, Taking Woodstock, probably won't be joining the list of his greats anytime soon, but there's nothing wrong with that. This is a small and slight movie, but it has a lot of charm, a few laughs, and a lot of likable characters. Even when the movie seemed to be more than a little aimless at times, there's a certain sweet-natured approach that Lee and screenwriter James Schamus bring.

Rather than focus on the actual Woodstock concert itself, the movie instead acts as a behind the scenes look as to how it all came together. I've heard a lot of people complain about the fact that the movie deliberately keeps the concert in the background the entire time. For those people, I recommend Michael Wadleigh's 1970 film documentary of the event. Ang Lee's movie is centered on Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), the one who made it all happen. He's a young man helping his parents Sonia (Imelda Staunton) and Jake (Henry Goodman) manage a run down motel that's on the brink of closure. We can see why business is not good. The pool is full of bleach instead of chlorine, and the penny pinching mother insists on rarely changing the sheets and charging an extra dollar for pillows on the beds. The bank is threatening to foreclose, and it's probably going to be their last summer in business. Elliot sees an opportunity to make a lot of money when he notices in the local newspaper that a youth music festival set for Wallkill has been canceled. Making a few phone calls, he brings the festival to his small town of White Lake, New York, and offers his motel as a base of operations and a place for the concert organizers to stay.

Taking Woodstock is very direct and low key. There's no real crisis motivating the plot. Sure, some of the locals are not exactly happy with the fact that thousands of Hippies are descending upon their quiet town, but it doesn't try to play up the melodrama. We see him strike a deal with local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) to hold the concert on his land. We also get to see how the event grows larger than he ever dreamed. Lee does a great job depicting the time period and the turn out, especially during a scene where Elliot takes a ride on a police officer's bike down the road, which is filled with people walking to the concert that is miles away. This sequence looks very complex, and must have been hard to set up, as there's literally thousands of extras on screen. We may not get to see the actual concert itself, but we do get to see a lot of the impact it had on the culture at the time. The movie gets a lot of the details right and feels authentic. There are even some sequences that seem like actual footage of the event, with the actors spliced in. (I couldn't tell if this was the technique they used, or if it was just a very believable recreation.)

We never really get a sense of things outside of Elliot's world, because the movie seldom leaves the motel grounds. Fortunately, there are some very memorable supporting characters that make it worth while. Staunton and Goodman get a lot of laughs as his traditional parents, who are at first not sure what to make of the strangers coming to their motel, but eventually get into the spirit of things. Liev Schreiber is surprisingly convincing as Vilma, an ex-Marine turned transvestite who acts as security at the motel when local teens start writing hate messages on the wall of the motel. The key to Schreiber's success is that his performance is played straight, and he lets the laughs come from his dialogue and his character, not from the clothes he's wearing. Emile Hirsch is also very good as Billy, a Vietnam vet who suffers from flashbacks. While the performance is faultless, the character never comes across as strong as it should. I suspect many of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor.

Oddly enough, it is Demetri Martin as Elliot who drags things down just a little. It's not that he's bad, he's just kind of a boring lead, and doesn't grab our attention as much as the other characters do. He's likable enough, but the movie doesn't give him enough to do. He acts as an observer for most of the movie. When he does take center stage, such as in a lengthy sequence where he has an acid trip, it brings the pace down to a near crawl. There are also some scenes that hint at sexual discovery for him, but these moments don't come across quite as strong as they should. It lends the film a strangely uneven tone that the movie never escapes from. Parts of it are very funny and lively, while other moments seem to be lacking life. At least the movie remains likable throughout, and that's why I'm recommending it.

For all of its faults, Taking Woodstock is an interesting little movie. It also manages to give us a side of a famous story that we haven't heard. That's the one thing audiences should keep in mind before walking into the theater. Those expecting a lot of actors posing as famous music faces of the era will be disappointed. It may not work all the time, but it worked enough for me.

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