Movie Summary of Taking Woodstock by Michael the Moviegoer.
TAKING WOODSTOCK = ***1/2
“Peace, Love And Chocolate Milk”
I’ve not yet read a single good review of Ang Lee’s new film “Taking Woodstock”. So I’ll write one. For starters, the bad buzz had significantly lowered my expectations. Maybe that’s why I was so pleasantly surprised at how utterly charming and delightful this film really is. The naysayers seem to be reviewing a different movie. The one they wanted to see instead of the one they were seeing.
If you want to see a film about the historic 1969 concert in upstate New York, watch the original film of the concert itself. No dramatization could ever equal or best that experience. But Ang Lee isn’t concerned with making that movie. Instead, he’s telling the story of a boy who’s radical decision to permit the rock concert to take place on the dairy farms of his dying town, not only saves the town and his family from financial ruin, but saves his own soul as well.
Ang Lee is a director who’s output couldn’t be more diverse. From tackling 70s suburbia in “The Ice Storm” to the gay cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain” Lee always strives to be as different as he can from film to film with only one common thread. Lee’s films are all painstakingly and extraordinarily photographed. Only in an Ang Lee film can a character ride a horse through the muddy garbage heap left behind by the Woodstock concertgoers and proclaim that it’s beautiful. Because, through the lens of Lee’s camera, it kind of is.
“Taking Woodstock” gives us all sorts of memorable characters. Liev Schreiber’s cross-dressing ex-Marine nearly steals the show. Eugene Levy’s dairy farmer, proud of his homemade chocolate milk. But a thunderous performance by Imelda Staunton (an Oscar-nominee for “Vera Drake”) really grounds the film in a realism that keeps it from slipping into a kind of “Austin Powers”-like 60s parody.
The ambitious production really does transport us to another place and time with probably more extras employed than in any film since “Ben-Hur”. It’s a loving homage to a period when “freedom was just another word for nothing left to lose”.
DVD Double-Feature: None of the stars who performed at the famous Woodstock concert are characters in “Taking Woodstock” because the movie isn’t about them. It’s about the people and the town that facilitated the event. In 1978, director Robert Zemeckis made a 60s-set movie about Beatlemania called “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”. In a similar fashion, his film was about a night in the life of Beatles fans, not about The Beatles themselves. The Fab 4 almost never show up as characters in the film.
Michael The Moviegoer
