We needed just a little more time in Max's field.
“Taking Woodstock” is a pleasant disappointment - pleasant because it’s a quiet
look at the origins of a chaotic subject, and a disappointment because no matter
what is happening on screen, we all want to walk across that field to hear Jimi
Hendrix play “The Star Spangled Banner.” Take us there, just for a few minutes,
Mr. Lee. But he never does.
Director Ang Lee, a Taiwanese with highly sensitive antennae, appears to love
examining cubbyholes of American culture (“The Ice Storm,” “Brokeback
Mountain”). And yet, talented as he is, he often seems an outsider burrowing
almost inside the American psyche, but not quite. In this case he hits the
target he has set – the raw beginnings of Woodstock – but misses the target the
audience really wants – a piece of the happening itself.
More than
forty years ago Elliot Tiber left the rural quiet of his hometown, Bethel, NY,
for the promise of Greenwich Village, only to be summoned back by his aging
father to save the family business – a motel on a rapid slide to failure. As
head of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce, Elliot heard that the neighboring town
of Wallkill had denied a concert permit to a group looking to mount an outdoor
folk festival. With the acquired touch of a New Yorker, he called the festival
producers and offered his family’s motel, the El Monaco, as a staging area for
the festival crew. The growing crowd spread down the road to Max Yasgur’s
(Eugene Levy) field. And so both Elliot and Max and the now famous field of
grass and mud slid into history.
It’s not hard
to believe for even a moment that Elliot’s parents, Jake (Henry Goodman) and
Sonia (Imelda Staunton) have let their motel sink into ruin. They are cranky
with customers and have no idea how to run the place; if Wallkill hadn’t denied
the festival permit, the mild-mannered Elliot might have presided over the
family’s descent to oblivion. But instead, he spotted the opening and picked up
the phone.
As the story
picks up steam (an overstatement), it’s fun to watch the innocence in the crowd
at the El Monaco. Kids cavort awkwardly naked in a pond; a collective hug and a
kiss, guitars, folksingers, and peace signs sprout everywhere. Forget the mud
and the sewage; this was Woodstock, the shot fired by the hippies and heard
round the world. It was a chaotic 3-day campout that no one there would ever
forget.
If ever there
were an apt tagline for a story about the origins of Woodstock, it surely is the
one attached to this movie: “A Generation Began in his Backyard.” But Ang Lee
has told his tale in the mildest of ways. I think many of us left the theater
wishing we were humming a song by Joan Baez or Arlo Guthrie. We needed just a
little time in Max Yasgur’s field where a festival turned into a legend.
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