Hôtel Woodstock

Taking Woodstock is a personal story about a young man finding himself at a time when his generation was trying to do that throughout the world. It is not a "docudrama" about the event, so people expecting to relive the Woodstock festival, take note. Elliot's struggles and evolution through this unique event are another of Ang Lee's wonderfully textured allegories. That this fellow raised in China can so pointedly create the full emotional spectrum of the "youth movement" of that time is a testament to his artistry. This movie takes on a series of serious ideas with a light flair. Go in prepared to "go with the flow" and you'll leave feeling free, man.

Perhaps more than most films, you'll either get this or you won't. Ang Lee seems to have conjured up the past with an accuracy that most filmmakers would spoil with reverence. Through a series of vignettes and very small references to Wadleigh's 1970 documentary, "Woodstock," a legendary moment in culture gets celebrated with a sweetness that was part of the era that quickly evaporated.

I was reminded of the film "Dirty Dancing" not just in the setting but in the tone. Ang Lee keeps the humor from becoming too broad in depiction of the locals whose lives were about to up-ended in a way that no one anticipated but few would not welcome. The actors in particular find a common level to play with that draws the audience into the excitement. We know what will happen, but as the momentum builds to the actual event the audience is swept away just as the characters in the film are.

The key character, a very unimposing Demetri Martin, never falters in this coming-of-age story that mirrors the culture changes swirling around him. He gives a very strong performance and is virtually never off the screen.

I had read that the "main event" isn't recreated, and that's partially true. However, we "see" what most of the actual participants of the event saw of the performances on a stage set up in a cow field. It's a stunning moment in the film and as magical as the experience must have been. I was roughly the same age as the character, struggling with the changes of adolescence at a moment in time when there really weren't road-maps for the future. While I was far away from the East Coast, this event reached me in many of the same ways as the characters in the film. I suppose for most people my age that was also true.

While I flinched a few times when a "plot" would intrude into this whole dazzling work, it served the purpose for the power and point of the final moments: Standing in the muddy aftermath the hope of what was going to happen next was palpable for a whole generation, but the next event, Altamont with the Rolling Stones, ended it all with crushing horror. Yet, the optimism is still alive, I think. Equality for many racial and sexual minorities were fulfilled…or are being so fulfilled at this time…and one of the more ironic points of the film was actually scored during the trailers that preceded the feature: the previews for Michael Moore's "Capitalism" and that subject is what really ended the counterculture.

But for Ang Lee he gives the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock festival an original and unsentimental celebration. (And if hippies annoy you, this isn't the film you need to see.)

I worshiped the youth culture from afar in the late sixties. I was too young to participate but did my best to disrupt jr. high assemblies with the Fish cheer. I didn't know about the Woodstock Festival until two weeks after it occurred, and I remember how much I hated being oppressed by a traditional establishment patriarchy who wouldn't even drive me across town to an anti-war demonstration. When I finally saw the documentary the following year, I knew I had missed something that was epic and iconic. (Big sigh...)

I had been looking forward to "Taking Woodstock" since I first read that it was in production. I was particularly eager to see Demetri Martin in a starring role; I've admired him for some time. I've also spent quality time in the Catskills--I love that part of the country. Lee's film certainly captures the beauty of White Lake, and generally recreates the groove and vibe of a specific time and place, but the narrative seemed somehow disjointed (unintentional pun) There seemed to be too many empty moments substituting for poignancy, and undeveloped stories that might have added a bit more depth to Lee's tale.

Demetri Martin as Eliot Teber, was adorable but I was frustrated by his poker face (something that makes his stage comedy hilarious). I enjoyed Liev Schreiber whose drag was not only believable, but also compelling. Henry Goodman, as Eliot's beleaguered father, was also finely developed, but Imelda Stauntan played his mother as a shrewish fishwife with virtually no redeeming character qualities. Not even after pot brownies.

Seeing "Taking Woodstock" makes me miss my long lost soundtrack of the original concert, something I shall remedy this weekend. I'm also eager to watch the documentary again with it's hippie-trippie split screens and portraits of long gone poets, artists, and other kindred spirits.

From reading some of the other comments it sounds like most people that are disappointed in this film were mainly put off due to their expectations for a film that focuses on the music.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I loved the unique focus on the small town that hosted the festival and how it affected all of their lives. I believe it was a great way to really capture the vibe of Woodstock without getting too rapt up in the actual musicians that were playing, which to me has been focused on enough over the years.

If you have been to a multiple day festival before you will have a wonderful sense of nostalgia. This movie completely captures how amazing people can be when they remove themselves from the hum drum monotony of their day to day lives and get together with like minded strangers for a few days of complete freedom and joy.

A great feel good movie with a lot of veiled depth about the people that helped make Woodstock one of the most famous events the world has known.

I saw this movie being very attracted by the trailer which seemed to offer fun and deep involvement. Now I have seen it, and I can say that it is enjoyable, but not fully convincing. Obviously, Ang Lee drifts attention from the concerts and the music of those three epic days in 1969 to focus on the personal story of a young man and his odd family who worked and lived in the background of this great event. The characters are engaging, very well interpreted, but in the end I missed the real protagonist, music, being it the powerful means through which these young people gave voice to their need for change and revolution and which was revolutionary, indeed. The atmosphere of those days is rendered vividly, we get many physical perceptions, of naked bodies, mud, rain, sun, but not acoustic ones, and I perceived this as a flaw throughout the movie. In the end you ask yourself: wasn't Woodstock mainly a three-day concert? Where is music? The movie is solidly directed, the director knows perfectly what kind of product he wants to offer, and in the end we get fun and reflection around, but never inside an event, which never comes to be explicit. Very good actorial interpretations (Imelda Staunton playing the mother is simply wonderful), although the characters themselves appear to be looking for a soundtrack which lacks till the end.