Taking Woodstock

[Sonic Youth]

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Taking Woodstock
16 May, 2009 | By Allan Hunter
Screendaily

Dir. Ang Lee. US. 2009. 120 mins


Taking Woodstock is a sweet, meandering salute to the transformative power of three days of peace and music that took place in the summer of 1969. A defining moment in American cultural life is seen through the conventional prism of a young man’s coming of age and assertion of his individuality. The underlying themes of family tensions and personal epiphanies are quintessential Ang Lee territory but this is a slender anecdote compared to the award-winning reach of more recent Lee ventures like Brokeback Mountain (2005) or Lust, Caution (2007).

Fortieth anniversary nostalgia among the counterculture generation should create an initial curiosity among older audiences when the film is released in August, and younger viewers might also conceivably discover that the film’s laidback vibe chimes with the can do attitude of the Obama era. Taking Woodstock is accessible but very lightweight and should enjoy moderate commercial success as a specialised domestic release. The very American, softly sentimental nature of the film will make it a harder sell internationally.

Based on Elliot Tiber’s memoir, Taking Woodstock views Woodstock through its impact on the life of one man and his family. The event itself is only ever seen from a far distance and anyone expecting a glimpse of Janis Joplin or a blast of Jimi Hendrix will be sorely disappointed. Instead, we follow interior designer Elliot (Demetri Martin) as he abandons Greenwich Village and returns to the rundown Catskills motel owned by his parents Jake (Henry Goodman) and the tyrannical Sonia (a very theatrical Imelda Staunton). The El Monaco motel is dirty, dilapidated and burdened by debt but dutiful son Elliot has put his dreams on hold to save the business. When nearby Wallkill refuses to grant a permit to a music festival, Elliot places a call to Woodstock Ventures. Soon the biggest ‘happening’ of the 1960s is about to land on his doorstep.

Taking Woodstock has an unobtrusive eye for period detail. True Grit is playing at the local cinema, the Apollo moon landings are on the television and the war in Vietnam has become part of the fabric of daily life. 1969 is the dawning of the age of Richard Nixon and the film raises a cheer for a moment in which hope had yet to surrender to bitter disillusion. If half a million hippies can live in harmony with the law-abiding folks of the American heartland then maybe for at least these three days anything was possible.

While the wider themes are persuasive enough its the smaller human stories that are disappointingly banal as Woodstock becomes a form of therapy for Elliot and his parents. The film fragments to include the stories of troubled Vietnam veteran Billy (Emile Hirsch), cross-dressing ex-marine Vilma (Liev Schreiber) and some half-hearted attempts to convey the staunch opposition and bigotry of local inhabitants who would have preferred Woodstock to have taken place far from their front porches. Lee almost seems to acknowledge that this is not enough to carry a two-hour film as he also fills the running time with impressionistic, split screen crowd scenes conveying a flavour of what it might have been like to attend Woodstock, something more than adequately achieved already in Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning documentary Woodstock.

Taking Woodstock offers some obvious laughs and tugs at the heart strings as Elliot embraces his homosexuality and his parents learn to let go. Newcomer Demetri Martin has the air of a young Dustin Hoffman, Elliot Gould, Richard Benjamin or several performers who were breaking through to leading cinema roles at the time of Woodstock. His gentle, guileless manner makes him perfect casting for Elliot without settling the matter of whether he is charismatic enough to have a sustained cinema career. Liev Schreiber brings dashes of sass and style to cross-dressing Vilma but Imelda Staunton’s dowdy, embittered Sonia is overcooked and all too reminiscent of Shelley Winters in full flow.

Enjoyable in places and merely humdrum in others, Taking Woodstock ultimately feels like a minor Ang Lee digression in between more memorable works.

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Film Review: Taking Woodstock
By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter


CANNES -- The name Woodstock evokes so many themes in the mind from the 1960s counterculture to the explosion of youth music and sexual liberation. Yet Ang Lee's new film "Taking Woodstock" runs counter to any expectations that a world-class director would plumb the meaning of this transforming event. Instead Lee delivers an entertaining light comedy about a real-life person who somewhat inadvertently helped the whole iconic concert to take place.

It's a low-wattage film about a high-wattage event. Which is somewhat disappointing, though you do get a thoughtful, playful, often amusing film about what happened backstage at one of the '60s' great happenings. Focus Features plans a mid-August release to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. The film should appeal to everyone from that era, from aging hippies and love children to -- perhaps -- a few offspring. The film does not feel like it has significant boxoffice potential, but Lee's name will boost those numbers. Focus Features must be careful to emphasize, though, that this is not a music film.

James Schamus' screenplay derives from a book by Elliot Tiber whose efforts to save his Jewish immigrant family's dying motel in upstate New York did a lot to launch 1969's Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. Comedy performer, writer and stand-up Demetri Martin plays Elliot and does so without any comic ticks. He's simply a guy who unwittingly sets wheels in motion that swiftly overwhelm him but he surely does enjoy the subsequent ride.

As a very young Chamber of Commerce president, he learns that a nearby town has denied a permit for a large music concert so he uses -- if not abuses -- his authority to bring the concert to White Lake. (Yes, Woodstock never took place in Woodstock.) His whole purpose is to get tenants for the El Monaco Motel run by his parents (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton). He gets a dozen to the room by the time his mother starts realizing the implications.

Of course, that's much later after Mr. Mellow Music Producer, Michael Lang (a very "relaxed" Jonathan Groff), touches down in a helicopter, and a battalion of lawyers, event organizers, construction crews and the like invade the quiet Catskills community.

Comic figures here include a theater troupe leader (Dan Fogler) -- whose actors shed their clothes at every opportunity -- a neighboring farmer (Eugene Levy), who negotiates a savvy deal for his cow pasture and a cross-dressing ex-Marine (Liev Schreiber) who hires on as security (and who is the film's only truly original character).

All too often, the film traffics in well-worn types such as Staunton's Jewish mother, very much over the top, and Emile Hirsch's brain-fried Vietnam vet. Also, one would never know from this movie that guerrilla theater was a vital and fascinating movement in that era or that drugs such as LSD carried any sort of danger. "Taking Woodstock" has certainly one of the more benign drug trips in film history.

The film lacks for villains. The local rednecks and a few towns folks get riled for fear that these hippies will rob them by day and rape their cows by night. Local mobsters seeking protection money get chased off by Elliot's dad with a baseball bat.

Otherwise, this is a possibly too tranquil a movie for the cataclysmic occurrence it seeks to dramatize. The film does well in capturing the size of Woodstock with its crowds and vehicles and merrymaking. But it never quite convinces you that this is a transformative event.

Lee uses the split-screen technique, which was all the rage back then, plus his crew has done a substantial job replicating the experience of Woodstock from a great distance with bands too far away to hear well. Yet somehow things never pull into distinct focus. Characters come and go too quickly, and despite Martin's fine performance the film's protagonist is ultimately too reactive and tangential a figure.

It's probably an OK thing that while Elliot is gay, very little is made of this fact. On the other hand, in 1969, being gay was no matter-of-fact thing. Perhaps, as with so many other things in this under-realized movie, something should have been made of this.

The old joke goes that if you remember Woodstock, you probably weren't there. "Taking Woodstock" creates a new one: If you do remember Woodstock, this movie is not how you remember it.

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Taking Woodstock
By TODD MCCARTHY
Variety

Gentle, genial and about as memorable as a mild reefer high, "Taking Woodstock" takes a back-door approach to revisit the landmark musical weekend through the antics and efforts of some of the people who made it happen. A sort of let's-put-on-a-show summer-camp lark for director Ang Lee after the dramatic rigors of "Brokeback Mountain" and "Lust, Caution," the picture serves up intermittent pleasures but is too raggedy and laid-back for its own good, its images evaporating nearly as soon as they hit the screen. Set for release in August on the 40th anniversary of the event, the Focus release looks like a mild B.O. contender.

Completely endorsing the sanctified view of Woodstock as the one, brief, shining moment of the Age of Aquarius before it all got painted black four months later at Altamont, James Schamus' script focuses rather too much on how the experience liberated and transformed local fellow Elliot Teichberg, who, under the name Elliot Tiber, wrote the book that inspired the film. Teichberg played a crucial role in making the festival happen at all, having stepped in when the original permit was revoked to contact event producer Michael Lang and provide a base of operation at his parents' ramshackle motel.

Given the film's vast canvas and ambition to provide a kaleidoscopic portrait of a generational movement, Elliot's personal issues -- his feelings of responsibility to his immigrant parents, closeted gay status and general behavioral uptightness -- seem unduly magnified in relation to everything else that's going on. As played by comedian Demetri Martin, Elliot (who in real life was 34 at the time, older than the "generation" in question) is a mild-mannered, unassertive guy without much electricity as a central screen presence. In the role's conception and casting, Elliot is clearly patterned after Dustin Hoffman's Benjamin Braddock in "The Graduate," but the effect isn't remotely the same.

Elliot -- who's returned to the Catskills from his career as a painter/designer in New York to help bail his parents out with mortgage problems on their dilapidated El Monaco Motel -- has no idea what he's getting into when he uses his influence to greenlight a local "music and arts festival." A counterculture theater company occupies his parents' barn but, as soon as cagey producer Lang (newcomer Jonathan Groff, in a very effective turn) shows up, the hippie invasion begins in earnest; the boost in tourism even inspires Mom and Pop (Brit thesps Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton) to spruce up the motel.

Although some local opposition still tries to block the festival, there's no stopping the tide once dairy farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) opens up his 600-acre property. A crude mob attempt to extort protection money from the Teichbergs is nipped in the bud by a macho ex-Marine in a dress and blond wig (a nice turn by Liev Schreiber), embittered Vietnam vet Billy (Emile Hirsch) tries to figure out how to reconcile with all this peace and love stuff, and Elliot dares to publicly express his affection for a hunky construction worker.

Despite being temporally defined by the run-up to the fest and the weekend itself, the pic has a formless, unstructured feel, as its attention jumps from incident to incident in almost random fashion. Some distantly heard music serves notice that Woodstock itself has begun, but the stage is only ever glimpsed from atop a faraway hill. The musical performances are clearly not the subject of the film, but there's no denying that their absence makes "Taking Woodstock" feel oddly incomplete; the table is set, but the meal never gets served.

Instead, Lee delivers a couple of setpieces intended to convey the magnitude and essence of the moment. The first involves a long ride by Elliot on a police motorcycle that slowly proceeds through a mass of vehicles and humanity on the road leading to the concert site; it's a lovely, visually overflowing scene, marked by an almost eerie sense of calm and peacefulness, and one that would have been welcome at considerably greater length. The other is a climactic acid trip taken by Elliot in the company of two comically mellow hippies (Paul Dano, Kelli Garner) that allows Elliot to view the landscape of 500,000 people below him as undulating waves of humanity.

Inclined more to personal than societal politics, the film keeps the parade of history in the background (the moon landing, Vietnam and Middle East tensions are glimpsed on television). Other than the oddly extended attention devoted to the harsh irascibility of Elliot's unbendingly greedy mother, pic is pleasant enough on a moment-to-moment basis, but the separate sketches never coalesce into anything like a full group portrait.

Convincingly scruffy thesps look like the cast of the "Hair" revival multiplied by hundreds, and the period re-creation is credible, both in fashions and speech, with a couple of exceptions in the latter case.

[Sabin]

Manchurian Candidate. Awesome.

[flipp525]

Liev Schriever as a cross-dressing security manager? I hate to admit it, but he’s better in “Wolverine.”

Thanks, but I'll wait til others weigh in on this one. Liev ShrieBer's (the reviewer spells his name wrong) best performance to date (which happened to be his screen debut) was as a cross-dresser in Mixed Nuts. And he was utterly fabulous.



Edited By flipp525 on 1242420788

[Sabin]

It's only a matter of time before someone calls it "Nonsense and Sensibility."

...only a matter of time...

[Sonic Youth]

Uh-oh.

No Sense or Sensibility: Lee’s “Woodstock” Undercooked
by Eric Kohn
indieWire

A scene from Ang Lee's "Taking Woodstock." Image courtesy of Focus Features.Considering the iconic event at its center, the most surprising aspect of “Taking Woodstock” lies with the decision to make it into a rather flat comedy. Even with the ever-versatile Ang Lee behind the camera, this messy historical fiction plays like a two hour “Saturday Night Live” sketch, and not a very good one, either.

Demetri Martin plays young aspiring designer Elliot Tiber, whose abrupt decision to lend his parents’ motel and music permit in Bethel, New York to the folks behind the Woodstock Music Festival solidified his role in the cultivation of twentieth century American counterculture. Although the movie culls from Tiber’s memoirs, it lacks any sense of authenticity. Instead, we get an uninspired, frustratingly simplistic depiction of both the event and the era as a whole.

With the youthful Tiber’s amiably soft-spoken persona in the foreground, “Taking Woodstock” theoretically had the potential to become a delightful coming-of-age story on the level of “Almost Famous.” Unfortunately, the pervasive superficiality of the performances and overly referential script rule that out from the very beginning. Martin’s stiff delivery might have worked if he was surrounded by an aura of credibility, but rest of the cast complicates the issue. Liev Schriever as a cross-dressing security manager? I hate to admit it, but he’s better in “Wolverine.” Imelda Staunton as a Tiber’s Yiddish-spouting mamele? Even Tovah Feldshuh would have been over the top. Paul Dano as a tripped-out hippy and Emile Hirsch as a wild Vietnam vet seem more like props than real people.

The eye-rolling quotient is high in this movie, but no higher than in the final scene, when Andy Samburg—as head of the organization responsible for the event—strolls into the arena riding a white horse, gloriously announcing the next great moment in music history by hinting at the upcoming Altamont Free Concert. Sequel, anyone?

That moment works according to the same confounding logic of the movie’s opening: Staunton watches television reports of war in Israel before flipping the channel, where she conveniently discovers coverage of NASA’s plan to land on the moon. “Taking Woodstock” contains many such blatant nods to history, constantly stripping away the realism.

Lee’s direction never does much to enliven the proceedings, either. A split screen devise blatantly ripped from the classic “Woodstock” documentary just distracts from the action, and an acid sequence falls low in the pantheon of cinematic acid trips. Occasional archival footage pops up in expository sequences, which does little except provide a reminder that the real thing contained many more entertaining qualities than this undercooked project. Worst of all, “Taking Woodstock” remains on the sidelines of event, with only passing references to the actual music. That may pertain to the context of the story, but it sure would have helped if the movie contained a catchier soundtrack.