Review of Taking Woodstock (2009) by Chads — 29 Aug 2009

Music wafts over a lake teeming with skinny-dippers. "Three days of peace and music" is unfolding at Max Yasgur's farm without us; we're not there to see Richie Havens open the festival, or anybody else take the stage, for that matter.

That's because Elliott Teichberg(Demitri Martin) is always hanging around his parents, even after he takes his first tab of acid. "Taking Woodstock" will be a bad trip for those of you expecting nostalgia for dummies.

Admittedly, there's no vicarious thrill in watching concert planners plan; we want Jimi; we want Janis, or rather, their thoughtful impersonators. The filmmaker acts as if he couldn't secure the rights to the music.

The only live music in "Taking Woodstock" is performed by some amateur band at a warm-up concert for the locals. It's worse than watching Gwynneth Paltrow recite Sylvia Plath-like poetry in Christine Jeffs' compromised film(2003's "Sylvia") about the suicidal poetess.

We want the real thing(real poetry, real rock lyricism) not some knock-off, as a payoff to all the minutae that went into mounting a large-scale undertaking like Woodstock. Told in the filmic language of Michael Wadleigh's documentary, the split-screen technique unintentionally parodies "Woodstock" instead of paying homage to the 1970 film, because what it documents seems so mundane and uncinematic.

To our disappointment, the little people never give way to the stars. "Taking Woodstock" is limited by a protagonist who loves Judy Garland more than Joan Baez. Elliott's indifference to rock and roll forces the filmmaker to create a period piece movie without a glut of corresponding music as shorthand for establishing time and place.

There's no Buffalo Springfield at his disposal; he achieves the look and feel of the sixties almost solely through "mis-en-scene", best exemplified in the scene where we see a late-sixties time capsule as shifting panorama, while Elliott is being escorted to the concert by a motorcycle cop.

For what it's worth, "Taking Woodstock" succeeds, even though we're mad at Elliott for not getting us anywhere near the stage.