DIRECTED BY Ang Lee
STARRING Demetri Martin, Henry Goodman, Imelda Staunton, Emile Hirsch
US 2009 110 mins
It’s not often we accuse a film of being too subtle for its own good – the opposite is usually the case – but that dubious honour goes to Taking Woodstock, a tentative drama that’s clearly made by smart people yet struggles to stay in the memory. Even the title may be too subtle (though I guess that comes from the original book, a memoir by one Elliot Tiber): it feels like it should be called ‘Making Woodstock’, not ‘Taking’ – the film is a behind-the-scenes account of the 1969 Woodstock Festival, the defining event of the peace-and-love generation – until you realise it’s a pun on ‘taking stock’, which is what Elliot (played by Demetri Martin) is doing with his life, having interrupted (or abandoned) a job as an interior designer in New York to help his parents with their rundown motel in the tiny hamlet of White Lake.
Another example of perhaps excessive subtlety is the music – because there isn’t any. This makes sense: with half a million people (the combined population of Nicosia and Limassol) in one place, standing near the stage generally wasn’t an option. When Elliot ventures out to experience the concert, he ends up getting waylaid by an amiable hippy couple and dropping acid (for the first time) in the back of their van – because that’s what Woodstock was, not an ordinary concert but a Happening, where you met new people and shared the Experience in a bubble of fuzzy togetherness. Now and then, way in the background, we hear a recognisable song being sung (a few bars of ‘I Shall Be Released’, for instance) but that’s about it. The film feels honest, and eliding the music was certainly a bold, subtle choice. Yet Woodstock without Janis, Jimi and the rest … well, it just isn’t very memorable.
Taking Woodstock works best as an insider’s account of what happened, and a snapshot of two very different Americas in uneasy co-existence. The hippies behind the concert are polite, enthusiastic but also well-funded and definitely out to make a buck, much sharper than the conservative country folk whom they dazzle with bushels of cash-in-advance – yet mutual suspicion remains, this being the time of Vietnam and peace marches. “These people, they eat and drink like animals!” says Elliot’s father – but in fact Dad is rejuvenated by the influx of fun-loving young people, and even his impossible Mum (Imelda Staunton as the Jewish mother from hell) ends up dancing in the backyard under the – accidental – influence of hash brownies. One of the film’s little paradoxes (not a problem, just a paradox) is the way it both deconstructs Woodstock and views it with the usual wide-eyed reverence, a lucky accident that nearly didn’t happen yet subtly changed the lives of everyone involved with it.
There’s that word ‘subtle’ again – and the most subtle aspect is perhaps Elliot himself, his inner life and especially his sexual life. Initially he’s just the protagonist, our identification figure. We implicitly assume that he’s straight (though the director is Ang Lee, who made Brokeback Mountain) – but then, after the hippies arrive, one young man is casually leafing through Elliot’s record collection, and they talk about Judy Garland and Elliot moves a little too close, and we instantly know (without a word being said) that he’s actually gay and in the closet. Subtle stuff. Later on, however, Elliot gets a little too bold at a party, kissing the young man on the lips, then turns round in panic to where his Dad was sitting, to see if Dad witnessed the kiss – but all we see is an empty chair, and we never find out if Dad left before his son’s indiscretion or left in disgust after seeing it. That’s too subtle. It’s great that they left it open – but we need to know these details, or it kills the drama.
In the end, for all its virtues, Taking Woodstock winds up in the ‘wait for DVD’ file – a strong and intelligent film that nonetheless lacks a certain something. “Perspective is what shuts out the universe!” argues one of the hippies when Elliot invokes the p-word; “It keeps out the love!”. It’s not often we accuse a film of lacking sloppy, unsubtle euphoria, but this may be one of those times. Too much perspective, not enough love.
