Taking Woodstock is a change of pace return to lighter comedic filming for director Ang Lee. Coming off the widely acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, and the more ambivalently received Lust, Caution, this film feels like Lee catching his breath and telling a story that touches on some of his core themes, but is primarily about having fun observing a major cultural event and letting the viewer get caught up in the madness and spectacle of the behind the scenes preparation for the generation-defining Woodstock music festival.
The film tells the story of Woodstock’s birth through the eyes of Elliot Tiber, a frustrated artist trapped at his parents’ rundown Catskills motel. Through a series of fortunate coincidences, he winds up bringing the Woodstock festival to his neighbor’s farm, and the motel becomes a busy hub for the event. The film never actually shows any of the bands that play the festival, it’s more about the community that arises to realize the festival, and the way that becoming part of this event reinvigorates both Elliot and his mother and father.
The big criticism of the film on its Cannes premiere was its slightness. For such a seismic cultural event, most of the film is a low key character study. It’s not about Woodstock, and I’ll admit that it is a bit frustrating to never reach the main stage or see any actual performance. The film posits Woodstock as more of a cultural event than a musical one, but you can’t help but want to catch a glimpse of The Who or Hendrix after getting so engaged with the event.
But, as a character piece, the film works. Demetri Martin does a great job as Elliot, but the two standout actors are Henry Goodman as Jake’s father, who gets new life running the busy motel, and fully accepts the various counterculture personalities who come to the motel, and Liev Schreiber as Vilma, a war vet who just happens to be a transvestite. The brilliance of the performance is that Schreiber plays it utterly unaffected — change the costume and you’ve got a regular vet, but juxtaposing that attitude with his women’s clothing makes the counterculture world clear.
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