REVIEW: ‘Taking Woodstock’
With “Taking Woodstock,” Ang Lee attempts to put a human face on the “half a million strong” audience of the Woodstock Arts & Music Festival. Unfortunately for the movie, Lee succeeds all too well.
Eugene Levy and Demetri Martin
“Taking Woodstock” tells the story of the three days of peace and music through the eyes of the person who was almost singularly responsible for giving the festival a home: Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), the young president of the White Falls Chamber of Commerce, finds out that the Woodstock festival has been kicked out of its first two locations and is in danger of not having a site. Elliot convinces Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) to allow the festival on his expansive dairy farm, and alienates everyone else in the town in the process of making the sleepy, uptight New York town the epicenter of the hippie universe.
When Elliot isn’t fighting the neighbors, he’s battling with his nebbish mother (Imelda Staunton) who refuses to cut the apron strings and pinches every penny until it begs for mercy. Staunton, who was deliciously evil as Dolores Umbridge in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” takes every stereotype of the Jewish mother and cranks it up to 11 in each scene.
Kelli Garner and Paul Dano with Martin
The greatest failing in the movie comes in its central character, and I can’t tell if it’s a shortcoming with Martin’s acting, or Lee’s direction. I really wanted to care whether or not Elliot made it down to actually see some of the festival he sacrificed the relationship he had with his neighbors to put on, or whether he could repair his relationship with his mother. In the end, however, Elliot’s aloofness equates a lack of empathy on the audience’s part. It becomes almost impossible to get a read on Elliot, and even when you find out that he’s layered and much more complex than his straight-laced demeanor lets on, it’s far too late.
Lee uses several filmmaking tricks to set the tone, from the split-screen sequences used infamously in Michael Wadleigh’s “Woodstock” documentary to the occasional bleached-out, overexposed frame set in to give the illusion we’re watching footage shot in 1969. It’s a visual treat, and one of the movie’s few saving graces.
People going to see “Taking Woodstock” hoping to relive the experience of the concert itself will be sorely disappointed. Like the vast majority of the people who were in attendance, we never get close enough to the stage at Yazgur’s Farm to be able to see Janis Joplin, Crosby, Stills & Nash, or Jimi Hendrix. Instead, the audience is kept on the periphery, craning our necks to get a look at what’s happening at the end of a sea of people.
While telling the ground-level story about how Woodstock became a cultural touchstone, and turned Yazgur’s Farm from the origin of “the best chocolate milk in the country” to ground zero of the music world, we lose something along the way. The joke goes, “If you remember being at Woodstock, you weren’t really there.” After watching “Taking Woodstock,” it feels like we got no closer.
