Taking Woodstock

I saw this movie being very attracted by the trailer which seemed to offer fun and deep involvement. Now I have seen it, and I can say that it is enjoyable, but not fully convincing. Obviously, Ang Lee drifts attention from the concerts and the music of those three epic days in 1969 to focus on the personal story of a young man and his odd family who worked and lived in the background of this great event. The characters are engaging, very well interpreted, but in the end I missed the real protagonist, music, being it the powerful means through which these young people gave voice to their need for change and revolution and which was revolutionary, indeed. The atmosphere of those days is rendered vividly, we get many physical perceptions, of naked bodies, mud, rain, sun, but not acoustic ones, and I perceived this as a flaw throughout the movie. In the end you ask yourself: wasn't Woodstock mainly a three-day concert? Where is music? The movie is solidly directed, the director knows perfectly what kind of product he wants to offer, and in the end we get fun and reflection around, but never inside an event, which never comes to be explicit. Very good actorial interpretations (Imelda Staunton playing the mother is simply wonderful), although the characters themselves appear to be looking for a soundtrack which lacks till the end.

I like how director Ang Lee offers something different with every film. The first tim ei laid my eyes upon his work was with 2003's "Hulk".....now a lot of people hated that movie, but i found it very enjoyable. Then of course there is "Brokeback Mountain", in which i found it rather bland. But his last movie, "Lust Caution" was probably the one i disliked the most. However, each of his films are very different......no, not just with their stories, but the way they are each presented.......and in my eye, he presents them very well. And honestly, i cannot wait to see him take a hack at a period piece such as Woodstock. Here is something i liked more than anything in the movie.......rather than WOW you with awesome music, or have them cut the camera away to show Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix.......they actually focus on the how this all came together, which was great......because not only was the story very entertaining, but it created this essence about the concert, that it was something far off in the distance that you would never see, and you only heard people talking about it......i mean you obviously know now what it was all about.....but it takes you on this incredible journey of this small town family, and when you finally get a small glimpse of the concert......oh my goodness, it was enough to take your breathe away. Mainl because you see all this preparation, and all these people.....you want to see what all this fuss is about, but it never goes deep inside, and that is what i loved about this movie. It focused its lense on the people to the side, the ones who were the most important, and it showed how they viewed this concert. But the one thing that i must talk about is the scene when our main character first arrives at the actual field......hence, the acid phase. Now im sure you have seen some cool stuff in other movies like "Fear in Loathing" or "Yellow Submarine", because i surely have........but i can assure you this.......that was probably the realist acid trip ever caught on camera. At times, i literally had to look away from the screen and wipe the drool off my face, because it was too real. It captures the feeling of being at an actual festival, better than anything i have ever seen on film before. Job well done in that department. Bottom Line.......great movie. That is it. Now im sure most of you want the whole, hey lets meet the bands and what not......if you want that, you can watch a million documentaries about it on VH1. But this movie takes you on a much different trip. One that i actually liked. Let's face it.....i have lived that life, and it is now gone from me........but it certainly created those old feelings in my soul once more. Fantastic period piece. Easily my favorite Ang Lee film to date.

TAKING (the Music Out of) Woodstock!....OK, maybe my re-worked title is somewhat over the top. But then "Taking Woodstock" is a bit over the top, too! Hell, 1969 was over the top, wasn't it?! But who really cares! Come on, people! It's a Movie! Name ONE film set in 1969 that isn't a little overdone. I should know about Woodstock; I was THERE.......in spirit!

Sadly, as much as I, and about 50% of Americans in my age demographic, longed to be present, we formed part of the 98%(of the half) who couldn't make it. The other 50%, incidentally, were probably praying for the earth to open up and swallow those 1/2 million music, marijuana and peace-loving souls. ("Nearly 500K attended Woodstock" -Wikipedia) Director Ang Lee has really amazed me. He has made...

A) The film that best encapsulates, captures the true essence, of this great cultural benchmark concert and most extremely divisive moment in our nation's history since the Civil War!

B) He did this despite being someone from outside our American culture!

C) He has managed to serve up what was, for me at least, the one of most entertaining and vibrant movies of 2009.

Laughed so hard at times, I cried! I can't even REMEMBER the last movie that did that for me!!! Isn't that what movies are supposed to be all about?

Demetri Martin is the late-twenty-something-good-Jewish-Still-living-at-home-son, who serves as the concert's catalyst. Martin renders his role with great finesse, aplomb and stand-alone chutzpah! (Check out his resume on IMDb: What a multi-faceted talent)

But the real scene-stealer was a TOTALLY unrecognizable Imelda Staunton, as the Jewish mother from Hell! She should have at the very least received an Oscar nomination! Fascinating "Woodstock" dichotomy: Martin's character is right there, in the center of the firestorm...and yet, NOT! What a great metaphoric irony for the millions of us, who were and weren't there, either!

Despite a few flaws, a Resounding 9*********

..... ENJOY! / DISFRUTELA!

From reading some of the other comments it sounds like most people that are disappointed in this film were mainly put off due to their expectations for a film that focuses on the music.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I loved the unique focus on the small town that hosted the festival and how it affected all of their lives. I believe it was a great way to really capture the vibe of Woodstock without getting too rapt up in the actual musicians that were playing, which to me has been focused on enough over the years.

If you have been to a multiple day festival before you will have a wonderful sense of nostalgia. This movie completely captures how amazing people can be when they remove themselves from the hum drum monotony of their day to day lives and get together with like minded strangers for a few days of complete freedom and joy.

A great feel good movie with a lot of veiled depth about the people that helped make Woodstock one of the most famous events the world has known.

Building a sweet coming-of-age comedy around a major American cultural event of the Sixties, 'Taking Woodstock' is lodged on the periphery of the legendary half-million-strong August 1969 "peace and love" rock concert held on Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake, in the town of Bethel, New York. While director Ang Lee gives perhaps the most vivid sense on film yet of what it might have been like to witness the event unfolding as a "townee," he approaches it crab-wise, getting inside it by hovering on the outskirts.

In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Quentin Tarantino remarked at how hackneyed biopics are. He suggested the best way to depict the life of Elvis would be to make a movie about one day in the life -- say, the one when The King walked into Sun Records the first time. Lee takes a similar approach to the enormous muddy happening of August 15-18 1969 (this film is a 40th-anniversary celebration). After all it's been thoroughly covered by documentary filmmakers, and most of the acts were thoroughly filmed and recorded. But 'Taking Woodstock' partly trumps that real footage by depicting how the happening built like an invasion, focusing on some of the locals and the promoters and a couple of the acid heads but never even focusing on the stage at all.

This might sound like a Robert Altman knockoff, but it's really quite different. Lee isn't trying to build up Woodstock through lots of vignettes and pieces. This is more like Tolstoy's vision of the Battle of Waterloo, but instead of the battle itself, the distant noise and tumult is that of a concert with thousands swarmed around it. That's true for a moment or two, at least, and those moments are haunting. But Ang Lee is no Tolstoy (though he did his own peripheral (Civil) war picture in Ride with the Devil). In the end he doesn't focus on the battle at all. Though Lee's young protagonist, Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), a gay Jewish every-youth and the dutiful son of an impoverished middle-aged couple whose decrepit motel has useless pretensions to being a Catskills resort, is depicted as making it all happen by, as head of the minuscule township's Chamber of Commerce, linking up charismatic, bushy-haired young promoter Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) with enterprising dairyman Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), Ellie remains a peripheral figure of the concert, not even the witness of any of the 32 acts performed on stage. Ang Lee's new film lacks the somewhat hackneyed solemnity and pretension of his (admittedly far more emotionally powerful) 'Brokeback Mountain' or (much more stylish) 'Lust, Caution,' but his idea of depicting a great event, like Breugel, by magnifying peripheral figures, is a nifty one.

Elliot Teichberg is the main such Breugel figure, but his parents, the long-suffering Jake (Henry Goodman), and the rigid, paranoid Sonia (Imelda Staunton) loom large for him and us, humble laborers who make the crucifixion come to life. So do the damaged but charismatic young Vietnam vet Billy (Emile Hirsch) and Vilma (Liev Schreiber), the drag queen security guard who's a link with Ellie's New York life as a budding interior decorator, and with the Stonewall riots that had happened just a couple weeks earlier when Elliot was in Lower Manhattan. And there are plenty of others, notably the VW Guy (Paul Dano) and VW Girl (Kelli Garner), who start Ellie on a wonderful acid trip in their van, becoming his guides on an introductory tour of psychedelics. Yeah, "you had to be there," but as hackneyed as the Trip trope is, this is a good one: in its details as in its overall approach, 'Taking Woodstock' often succeeds because it doesn't try too hard and is cozy, offhand, and humorous.

The Sixties aren't about heroics or style, but about getting down, smashing barriers, breaking free -- way-stations of the romantic experience and milestones in any coming-of-age. Woodstock didn't really happen on the stage but in the mud and vans and tents, and Lee shows it that way. Its realities also included an insufficient number of Porta Potties, and townspeople raging at Elliot and Max for making the event happen but then charging big fees for cabins or sandwiches or a drink of water. Elliot's own mother is one of these. But then, somebody gets Jake and Sonia high and they dance in the rain. The motorcycle cop comes to do crowd control and ends up wearing a flower and giving rides. It's corny, but it happened. On the other hand, the borderline caricature depictions of Jews, Schreiber's amiable but overly broad transvestite, and even Emile Hirsch's clichéd, if lively, battle-scarred vet, all could have been thought through better.

Broaching such large events even peripherally, Lee and his writers, James Schamus, Elliot Tiber (author of the source memoir) and Tom Monte, arguably do owe us a bit more of the sex, the bad trips, and the music itself -- which can't be left outside the story of a great concert, whether its protagonist got to the stage or not. If you look at the real people -- Michael Lang, for instance -- they were rougher and sexier than anybody in this movie. The images of Elliot Teichberg's coming-of-age are as lightweight as everything else, and in the superficial sketching of his gayness the movie is as bland as the ditsiest biopic. 'Taking Woodstock' is a sweet, gentle, easy take on events. But remember that it's a coming-of-age comedy that happens in the midst of a tumultuous event, and you'll see that the light touch is not invalid. This was not the great Bad Trip concert; it was the great Good Trip concert. And the light touch allows the film to feel comprehensive with delicacy and keep its focus on the young man's sensibility.