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If you want to see an accurate account of the 1969 music festival complete with Jimi’s screaming guitar, director Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock is not for you. However, if you’re looking for a more personal movie about coming of age in the Age of Aquarius amidst radical social change in America, this movie is just the ticket.
What he lacks in historical accuracy, Lee compensates for in his engaging portrayal of one unlikely Woodstock participant. Though the events in the movie take place during a time of great change for the country, they are more focused on the central character Elliot Tiber’s (Demetri Martin) journey to independence as catalyzed by the hippie gathering.
The story begins in small-town Bethel, New York, where Chamber of Commerce President Tiber is stuck in a rut between businessman and mama’s boy. His pivotal yet accidental role as a Woodstock community organizer finally opens the door to his adulthood and grants him the freedom he needs.
Despite Tiber’s personal awakening, the viewer is constantly reminded that not every American during the Summer of Love was so keen on its ideals. Bethel locals, supporters of the Vietnam War, and health inspectors show up periodically throughout the film to represent the portion of Americans still skeptical of the movement’s beliefs. It is with these images that the viewer can fully understand how divided the country was, and how radical a change in lifestyle the hippies were pushing for with their music and political beliefs. As one local dissenter in the movie puts it, “They’ll be robbin’ us by day and rapin’ the cattle by night!”
And yet the festival rolled on. There to help spread the love to Tiber was an entertaining cast including a cross-dressing security guard, Vilma (Liev Schreiber), a theater troupe of barn-residing hippies in a nod to Hair, and Tiber’s wartorn childhood friend Billy (Emile Hirsch). Taking Woodstock is able to represent a wide variety of characters without the risk of stereotyping. Perhaps the best performance would go to Imelda Staunton for the role of Tiber’s mother Sonia, a penny-pinching, slightly deranged bumpkiness.
The same cannot be said for Martin, who is simply more of a comedian than a serious actor. I kept wondering when he would pull out a giant notepad and marker to aide him in joke-telling, as he does on his Comedy Central show Important Things with Demetri Martin. However, with no jokes to tell, Martin only seemed out of his element.
Though Martin may not have been perfect for the role of Tiber, one spot-on aspect of the movie is the cinematography. Some scenes are shot in a more sepia-toned, grainy resolution, while other scenes are separated into two frames, as a homage to the original 1970 Woodstock documentary. In its de rigueur trip scene, the moviegoer is treated to an intensely colored, swirling spectacle without any of the consequences typically associated with the use of psychedelics.
Tiber seems trapped between the two extremes: at one end, the attractive hippie idyll, and at the other, the constant watch of his overprotective parents at their “El Monaco National Hotel Casino and Bar Mitzvah Center.” But armed with an event permit to help put on the world’s first Aquarian Exposition, Tiber begins his journey to true independence. While Taking Woodstock chronicles the festival’s great effect on a small community, it also tells of an individual’s entry to adulthood, and for this it should be commended.
So take advantage of this rare opportunity to throw on a tie-dye shirt or some horrendous paisley bell-bottoms and take a trip yourself — to the theater, of course
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