This was a real treat. Being an extreme Woodstock-phile I know alot of small behind the scenes facts and details. The Michael Wadleigh documentary is simply the holy grail of doco's! I was under the assumption parts of this were made up for the movie and I refused to go to the theatre to see it. I was sooo wrong! Not only is it factual, they nailed so many details taken and recreated from the documentary!Like the nuns being filmed while flashing a peace sign! The Earth Light players! Hog Farmers!All of the people who whine that it's a movie about a concert with no music in it, GO WATCH THE MICHAEL WADLEIGH 4 HOUR DOCUMENTARY! In fact, if ya wanna make a weekend of it, watch them back to back! This tells the background of the concert and the local politics. You don't need a movie with the music in it...The documentary already exists and more people need to become hip to it. This movie just made my heart jump when the first helicopter lands at the El Monaco motel!
Eugene Levy's portrayal as Max Yasgur is uncanny. No other actor could have pulled that off but him. He looks and talks just like the real Max. Watch the documentary right before Hendrix near the end and you won't believe the likeness! A perfect companion to the Academy Award winning documentary!
Into this languid summer come two key folk Michael Lang and Max Yasgur. Lang is an imperturbable saintly visionary from the City with the faith and means to walk the key parties through messy negotiations. Yasgur is portrayed as an enlightened agrarian businessman able to envision qualities lost on his parochial peers and acumen to make this into a venture profitable for all.
There were initial clashes between locals and those part of early negotiating. However, once contracts were settled and the project began to unfold the momentum of the operation overwhelmed the situation. Construction crews, event planners and early arrivals for the festival descended. Masses of gentle folk grew daily until the entire region was gridlocked by thousands of `citizens' of the `Woodstock nation'.
The carnival of freaks, politicos, quasi-psychotic acid heads, spiritualized bohemians and other assorted holy men and women were stereotypically characterized. Locals were bemused, perplexed, exasperated and offended, but most did not fail to succumb to the combination of gentle-spirited hippie culture and the financial boon that poured in.
One particular narrative episode captures the hippie mythos underlying the film's vision. The preparations for the event are done. Elliot, his father and Vilma, a free-spirited transvestite providing security for Elliot's family, stand overlooking a lake as nude bathers play openly. The first strains of Richie Havens move through the woods signaling the festival's beginning. Elliot's father nudges him to go and experience the festival. Elliot hesitates but Vilma urges him on, "Go" he says, "see what the center of the universe is like". Elliot finds himself wandering among groups of camping hippies still some distance from the stage. He encounters a young couple who gently seduce him to drop acid with them. They retire to the interior of their bus richly decorated for inner space travel where Elliot is initiated in the ecstasy of cosmic visionary experience. Some hours later he emerges an awakened soul accompanied by the female consort. Still flashing in colors and serenity they make their way to a bluff overlooking the sea of people dotting the night with campfires. The view is rolling and undulating, wrapping around a vortex the lighted stage in the distance. The lights, colors and liquid landscape coalesce in a visionary patterned dance around the pulsing brilliant core of illumination flowing from the stage. Space and time are lost in the enveloping ecstatic vision in the presence of the Center.
This scene is the sacramental center of the story. The whole event is actually a festive gathering to celebrate the eucharistic psychedelic ritual. Its enactment is the animus mundi, the navel of the world, around which the dance of being whirls. This entire countercultural phenomena is like a fountain of creative and colorful life flowing from the bellies of ecstatically enlightened participants. Bohemian and transient in nature it wanders about the land erupting into spontaneous happenings. This particular one, though `planned', nevertheless exploded into unexpected proportions and intensity.
Of course this story is one in relatively recent history with many participants and critics alive and well. And the verdict of history has unfolded less graciously on subsequent events. This is not lost on the filmmakers who put in the mouth of a confident Lang plans of another festival of peace and love at Altamont. The irony is not lost on those knowledgeable of the tragic events there.
Following this narrative peak the story winds down to address loose ends between Elliot and his parents. The windfall of the festival has paid off their mortgage with surplus and Elliot is free to complete the process of separation-individuation from his family.
It was a delightful film that will fade quickly from public attention, leave theaters and be on DVD shortly. For some who go it will be for a moment of nostalgia, an entertaining story resonating with faint longings that surface as one ages. For the counterculture youth of today it is not their history, it is the history of their grandparents. The heady excitement of the Sixties is textbook material to them and most are living out their own generational narrative. They have Burning Man, Goa, Ibiza, and elsewhere.
For some the longing pricked cuts perhaps more deeply. Sure enough it was a period whose potency faded with the passing decades. What seemed of cosmic significance at the time was swallowed in the relativity of social change Nevertheless, the glimpse into the white-hot core of mystery pulsing at the Heart of the Universe wouldn't be extinguished. It is a core memory implanted somewhere deep in psychic regions.
After the ecstasy many wandered back into the enveloping social order of the modern world. Some were damaged and wandered for years. Some re-acclimated into the status quo, even `succeeding' well at it. Some found creative paths integrating alternative spaces with demands of survival. Some became monks, roshis, gurus, disciples, teachers, and priests. None, however, whose hearts were pierced have forgotten when they were touched by the Center of the Universe.
Buy Taking Woodstock (2009) Now
I was lucky enough to see this movie in an actual theatre (remember those?) this past September, and it really was a delight. Watching with a small group of friends and loved ones, I felt a kinship with the central character and his simple desire to do something, anything, to change his fate while the world seemed to be changing its tune for those three days, at least. Being both a musician and a fan of all things European, I really liked the look and the pace of Ang Lee's film. While the book on which the film is based bubbles and froths madly and delightedly like a late Seventies hot tub, Lee's film presents a place and a time that feels alive and gentle like a spring leaf but also has the sullen gravity of the fallen leaf once the autumn comes. Demetri Martin comes across like a slightly-stoned Pinocchio, hoping through his 11th-hour involvement in helping to save Mike Lang's Woodstock festival from cancellation to become a real boy. (It's not coincidental that the actor who plays his father, Henry Goodman, looks a bit like Gepetto in the Disney animated classic of years ago.) Those who complain that this film doesn't have music are missing the point the film itself is music, and a soft and glorious one at that. Besides, there's a wonderful sequence towards the end of the film involving use of a song from `60s group Love being played on an 8-track cassette player in the back of a psychedelic VW van . . . that scene alone captures the real experience of being at Woodstock, at least as told to me over the years by those who were really there or who wanted so badly to have been there in person (though they were already there in their hearts). Having seen this film, I feel like I was at Woodstock too . . . and when this movie is available on DVD, I plan on going back . . .Read Best Reviews of Taking Woodstock (2009) Here
I happened to recently find this movie on my On Demand cable service. I had not ever heard of it.I'm a HUGE fan of 1969 WOODSTOCK, (have Collector's Edition of DVD). I have always felt I was born in the wrong era--I should have been there! (To me, there is really only ONE REAL Woodstock.)
I knew some of the facts in the movie Taking Woodstock, but it was AWESOME to see it put together and done so WELL!
I love the portrayal of Elliot, whom I perceived as the main character. I saw this as also a "coming of age" film, from his point of view. He was amazingly brilliant at such a young age and to make such excellent "business/promotion" decisions that had to be made under pressure.
It is *totally* a "feel good" movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would love to own the DVD!
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT!
In my opinion, the best review here on Amazon about the movie is by James Lossing (it should be the top review) so be sure to read it!
Want Taking Woodstock (2009) Discount?
Oscar-winning director Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock" takes us behind the scenes of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, but don't expect documentary-like accounts of the legendary concert. Based on the book by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte, and adapted by James Schamus ("Brokeback Mountain"), "Taking Woodstock" is a comedy drama about a young man who wound up bringing Woodstock to the quiet town of Bethel, New York.The film, set in the summer of 1969, centers on 34-year-old Elliot Tiber (Demetri Martin), an interior designer whose parents Jake (Henry Goodman) and Sonia (Imelda Staunton) run El Monaco Motel. The small motel, of which service and quality is not the best in town, is facing foreclosure.
Elliot manages to persuade the bank manager to wait for a while. Then he hears that the town of Wallkill pulled the permit for the upcoming Woodstock festival. Elliot, who happens to have a permit for a small local music festival, makes an offer to the concert's organizers. As it turned out, the music festival ends up attracting about 500,000 people to the town.
I am not interested in the factual accuracy of "Taking Woodstock." I know this is not a documentary (and there is already one, simply amazing "Woodstock"). The film beautifully captures the confusion (and near chaos) caused by the influx of attendees for the three-day concert. Ang Lee's comedy drama is full of fashion details and eccentric characters, mostly likable, but suffers from its underwritten drama about the protagonist and his family, and one-note performance from the lead. Where is Jake Gyllenhaal when we need him?
I enjoyed "Taking Woodstock" for its atmosphere of the late 60s America, and nice turns from supporting players (some of which sometimes border on caricature, though). What "Taking Woodstock" needs is a more strong portrayal of the protagonist, who is somehow the least interesting person in the film.
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