Was it serendipity or simply good timing that allowed Ang Lee to sneak a Woodstock film into theatres on the same month as the 40th anniversary? I don’t know, but much like the screen characters that attended that music and love fest in Bethel, NY for three days in August, I walked away dazed, confused and with little idea the significance of what I just witnessed. Certainly, the idea behind the film does not go a miss, a character drama based on the behind the scenes drama in staging one of the largest music festivals in history. But how does Taking Woodstock differ from other multi-character dramas about people who gather as if driven cosmically at a single, big event? The answer is not much.
The film stars Demetri Martin as Elliot Teichberg, a New York designer returning to his parents off the beaten path motel (or as they call it, resort) after loosing all his own money helping them keep the family business from foreclosure. Elliot, in his standing as President of the town’s chamber of commerce, gets the chamber to approve a permit for a local art and music festival he’s art director for. After reading in the paper that a nearby town repealed a permit for another festival, he has an idea: he has a permit to hold a music festival, they have acts like The Who, Joan Baez and Janis Joplin. Why not put two and two together? The result naturally is a little thing called the Woodstock Festival.
Martin in his first starring role is pleasant and affable, but I get the feeling though that he wasn’t really taxing his acting potential. He held down the fort alright, but I never really felt his gravitas as the story’s central figure. I’m guessing that in a film filled with quirky characters, all Martin thought he had to do was stand still and laugh as little as possible and he’d come off as serious. Again, that’s okay because the part didn’t require him to draw attention to himself. That honour goes to Imelda Staunton as Elliot’s mother who trades between chasing nude hippies off with a broom and cavorting money like Scrooge McDuck. It’s alright not to laugh; she’s probably the most stereotypically negative Jewish character since Watto in The Phantom Menace.
Not all performances strain the limits of tolerance though. The always likeable and dependable Eugene Levy plays Max Yasgur, the man who graciously offered use of his farm land to host the concert. Levy has the knack for playing things just right, and every time he’s on screen is pure delight. Jonathan Groff plays Michael Lang, the man behind Woodstock, with such an eerie calm that he himself almost seems like a grass-induced hallucination, just light as air and uncomplicated. Liev Schreiber plays cross-dressing security guard Vilma and is wickedly subtle, because there’s nothing as completely unsubtle as the thought of Liev Schreiber in a dress.
On the other hand though, the theatre troop (or is that commune) of hippie players led by Dan Fogler, are not as funny as they think they are and they seemed to disappear about halfway through the movie. Emile Hirsch looks like the kid brother of the Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July, only crazy instead of crippled. Of course the shell shocked soldier is going to spend his time engaging his ‘Nam flashbacks, only to find solace at Woodstock, writhing in the mud with the rest of the great unwashed. That’s just the way this is obviously going to unfold. And naturally there is one scene where hash brownies make their way to the dessert tray of Elliot’s parents, sending them into a freaka of dancing in the rain like a couple of flower powered people. Part of sad trend where in the only way a screenplay can humanize straight-laced characters is for them to get high on the down low.
But Taking Woodstock leaves a lot of things undone. There’s an entire plot thread where the Teichbergs and the Yasgurs encounter anti-Semitism for allowing the hippie horde to overtake Bethel, the festival’s logistical issues seem only touched on, and the whole subplot about Elliot being gay, and his potential love match with a carpenter, seems rather neutered. That last one is a surprise, especially from the man that gave us Brokeback Mountain. Regardless though, by and large, I think that Taking Woodstock was a good head and its heart in the right place. The focus isn’t the music, but the people, and how improbably an event that had disaster written all over it overcame the odds to become on the biggest deals of its decade. Groovy, but not far out.
