Review of Woodstock (1970) by Tim H — 21 Aug 2008

I don't know what is up with me and sixties concerts! Between this and Gimme Shelter, I fall in love.

Okay, everyone knows that Woodstock equals super-big concert that hippies will talk about until their dying day. I get it. At least, I thought I got it. Okay, I had no idea how big the damned thing was. I mean, the place was declared a disaster area! Do you realize how nuts that is? Half-a-million people all in one area. Now, they kept throwing that number around the movie, but I couldn't wrap my head around it until I saw the long helicopter tracking shot. That is the kind of stuff that blows my mind. That's the reason I wanted to see this movie.

Now, I love music, but music has always been my least nerdy aspect. I can talk shop about film, literature, comic books, etc., etc., etc. Music I kind of suck at. Maybe because I have terrible taste. I'm not talking terrible compared to most of America. No, I'm a connosieur compared to mainstream pop culture. But compared to other nerds, I kind of suck at it. Mainly, it takes quite a few listens to for me to really wrap my head around the music and allow it to become emotional. While it was still impressive to see these classic, vintage performances (in cases like Hendrix, historic!) I was much more involved with the documentary footage that goes on. The people there was the interesting part. Sure, I'm not a hippie. Heck, in a lot of cases, I want to punch hippies in their stupid hippie faces, but I really loved seeing a lot of the people at the time. Sure, there was still a fair share of hippies that I wanted to punch in their hippie faces, but then there were those kids who were just people going to a lifechanging event. I looked at them and can see that as much as things have changed, there are some fundamental things that stay the same.

But there were the hippies that I wanted to punch in the face and that's what made the movie even better for me. I think that some of the filmmakers could smell crazy like the rest of us and could step out of their decade to point out what was kind of crap. For some reason, I don't think that hippies were too particular about what they found truly great. Frankly, I'm talking about the performance art sections of the movie. I'm not saying all performance art sucks. I'm saying that a lot of it sucks. I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that all hippie performance art sucks. But there were people mesmorized by the word "explosion." Very subtle, hippies. Point one goes to me for not being stupid crazy.

I do have to really give credit to Wadleigh. He really balances a four hour film very well. There's easy ways to film the movie and that would be to treat each performer's set uniformly. Wadleigh goes the opposite direction and almost makes music videos for each performer somewhat reflecting the mentality of the artist and that is a heck of a thing to see. Sure, I'm not talking about full out, but just doing some cool camera tricks from time to time with some very fun editing made the movie really effective.

There is one thing that I really have to respect about the whole Woodstock scene that was really stressed in the movie. That is the idea that half-a-million people can get together, cause a disaster area, live in a form of poverty for three days in the mud by their own accord...

...and be very cool and innocent during it all.

Sure, there were drugs. They're hippies. They cover that. But honestly, this seemed like a very fun time without half-a-million people (or one person) acting like a complete douche. As anti-hippie as I am, I gotta respect that and it is very cool. Keeping that theme in mind, this is a great concert film and just a really impressive endeavor. Watch this one. You'll totally dig it.