TAKING WOOODSTOCK
Directed by Ang Lee
Produced by Celia Costas, Ang Lee & James Schamus
Written by James Schamus, based on the book by Elliot Tiber & Tom Monte
Released by Focus Features
USA. 121 min. Rated R
With Demetri Martin, Dan Fogler, Henry Goodman, Jonathan Groff, Eugene Levy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Imelda Staunton, Emile Hirsch & Liev Schreiber 
 

What else is there to say about Woodstock? The story’s already been told in documentaries, biographies, and autobiographies—this film is even based on one. So what more can be said of 400,000 acid-tripping hippies gathering for a three-day festival on the very tip of a zeitgeist? The story of the guy whose parents owned the motel that hosted the event in White Lake, New York.

Director Ang Lee focuses on Elliot Tiber (birth name Eliot Teichberg, played by Demetri Martin), a nebbish thirtysomething who commutes between his openly gay life in New York City to the Catskills, where he helps his Old World Jewish parents run a rustic motel in physical and financial shambles. Desperate for money, Elliot invites Woodstock organizer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) to bring the weekend-long concert to White Lake when he learns neighboring towns are too worried about a hippie invasion to grant Lang a festival permit. For three nights, his little town turns into the center of the universe, and the otherwise withdrawn Elliot is one of its gods. He may only run the motel where the fest’s founders are staying, but that makes Elliot feel like one of the blessed few in charge.

We track Elliot’s revelation that he can no longer hide from life as a self-exiled closet case, but we’re really here to see Woodstock. It’s inescapable. In that respect, the first hour is all foreplay. Winking to the camera, characters underestimate the magnitude or significance of the oncoming event. When the festival begins, Elliot is elsewhere, hearing the sound system bellow across a neighboring lake. Alongside him, we have to wade through a highway clogged with hippies, an acid trip, and a whole lot of exposition before we see the one and only shot Lee provides of the full crowd and stage. Without indulging in performance footage or famous tunes from the time, Lee lets the audience experience Woodstock like a festivalgoer would have—it’s almost like an immersive theme park ride at Universal Studios.

However, some narrative moments are handled poorly. One awkward scene occurs when the hunky Michael Lang tells Elliot that they were childhood friends grewing up together in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Elliot says nothing in response while his parents rebuff Michael’s attempt to hug them, and this moment is never mentioned again. Did these four characters really know each other? Why would they act that strangely? Lee’s cameras track emotion like bloodhounds, but casual human interaction and sexuality are better left off-screen—and often are.

The larger problem is the lack of a story. Are we focusing on Elliot or Woodstock? Neither is compelling. We already know about Woodstock, and Elliot’s story is Lee’s Brokeback Mountain with a different setting and happier resolution. Lee focuses not on the music but on how this moment in time allowed people to break away from their former selves. He captures the spirit of Woodstock in the same frothy way that Nora Ephron captures the essence of Julia Child in Julie & Julia—and Lee’s story might even be the more lighthearted. Zachary Jones
August 24, 2009