Movie review: Taking Woodstock

by Alex Bentley

A lot of movie titles mean very little, consisting of one or two words to give moviegoers a vague sense of the type of movie they're about to see. Taking Woodstock, based on the book of the same name, would seem to be pretty straightforward since it's the story of how the Woodstock Festival came to be located where it was (which was actually Bethel, New York, not Woodstock). After viewing the film, however, it's obvious that, in the hands of director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), the title is meant to evoke the term “taking stock,” as in “taking stock of one's life.”

More than a few characters do just that throughout the course of the film, first and foremost Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin). Teichberg, along with his parents, Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman and an unrecognizable Imelda Staunton), owns a motel in White Lake, just a couple miles from Bethel. He's also the president of the Bethel's chamber of commerce, which means that he's in charge of issuing permits for any events held in town. That happens to come in handy when he discovers that the Woodstock Festival is looking for a new venue after other sites fell through, and he is in possession for a music festival permit (albeit on a much less grand scale).

The rest of the film chronicles Elliot's role in facilitating the festival's progress, from introducing the promoters to milk farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy), who lets them use his land for the concert, to putting up a ton of concert-goers in and around the motel. Elliot is rarely off-screen, as the film is all about his experience, rather than the Woodstock experience in general. Consequently – and consider this a slight but essential spoiler – not one second of the festival is shown, either through archival footage or re-creation.

You see, despite his best efforts, Elliot always manages to be derailed by one event or another before he can actually reach the site. And this is the make-it-or-break-it element for viewers – if you're okay with seeing a movie that virtually ignores the music of Woodstock to focus on the atmosphere surrounding it, then Taking Woodstock is the film for you. If not, then it's mostly one big tease that never gives you the payoff you're expecting.

What Lee and writer James Schamus give us instead are details – tons and tons of details. So much so, in fact, that the film often gets lost in them. This leads to more than a few subplots being introduced only to lead absolutely nowhere. Among them are the townspeople's distaste for the chaos the festival is causing; a hate crime against the Teichbergs for being Jewish; a war veteran (Emile Hirsch) struggling with post-traumatic stress; a none-too-subtle drag queen/former policeman (Liev Schreiber) who volunteers for security duty; and on and on and on. All are window dressing for the film, in the sense that they could all be taken out without causing a lick of harm to the film's main story.

That main story, however, feels like it's been given a strong hit of every type of drug being passed around at the festival – it starts out well, but then declines into shiftlessness. Elliot's road to self-discovery promises to be interesting, but as the film goes along, it becomes harder and harder to care about what he's getting out of the experience. Every single hippie trope known to man is trotted out and put in Elliot's path, which is expected but still tiring when no point seems to be forthcoming. It may have been fun to go through that in person, but watching a movie about it borders on excruciating.

Matters aren't helped much by Martin, a comedian making his first foray into a semi-serious role. He does alright in the lighter moments, but isn't convincing in the slightest when his character starts to transform. The appearances by Hirsch and Schreiber are too scattershot to be judged fully. Staunton and Jonathan Groff, who plays concert organizer Michael Lang, make the biggest impressions. If you liked Staunton in Vera Drake or as Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, you'll be flabbergasted by her performance as a feisty Russian Jew here.

Ang Lee, in trying to give the vibe of the festival without the essence of that vibe (the music, man), has ended up with something almost unfathomable when talking about Woodstock – a boring film.