Taking Woodstock **** (2009, Demetri Martin, Liev Schreiber, Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch, Paul Dano, Imelda Staunton, Henry Goodman, Kelli Garner) – Classic Movie Review 4635

It’s the summer of love in 1969. Elliot Teichberg – aka the original source book author Elliot Tiber – is a struggling young gay interior designer working at his parents’ rundown motel in up-state New York, who hears the next town has refused a permit for a hippie music festival.

So, to whip up some much-needed business for the motel, he calls the producers and sets off the invasion of half a million people for the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival on his neighbour Max Yasgur’s dairy farm.

Filming in realistic style with some split-screen work, just like the famous 1970 documentary movie Woodstock, director Ang Lee (Oscar-winner for Brokeback Mountain) again finds warmth and love in the company of the dispossessed, in this unusual, quirky and rewarding film. It is all surprisingly low key and rambling, but most of all also very likeable, truthful and atmospheric.

With such huge crowds arriving and turning the highway into one long car park, it must have been a difficult job to make the images feel right. But it looks great and totally convincing too, apart from the shockingly feeble CGI images of the concert in the background. No actual authentic Woodstock footage is used.

New York stand-up comic Demetri Martin plays Elliot with laid-back, gawky charm. Some might find him too laid-back and low on charisma, but it’s a subtle turn that works well. Weirdly cast Imelda Staunton has huge fun as Elliot’s crazy Jewish mom and fellow Brit Henry Goodman is very touching as dad, Jake Teichberg.

Liev Schreiber makes a big splash as a cross-dressing ex-marine, gay transvestite Vetty von Vilma, and Eugene Levy is ideal as Yasgur. But, oddly, more than capable players like Emile Hirsch (as recently returned Vietnam vet Billy) and Paul Dano and Kelli Garner (as a hippie couple in a VW attending the concert) don’t make any real impression at all, so it is all about the family trio of gay son, mum and dad. Also in the cast are Edward Hibbert as British Gentleman and Kevin Chamberlin as Jackson Spiers.

Danny Elfman’s score effectively conjures up the style of music of the period, but very little is to be heard on the soundtrack of the bands in the concert. This underrated movie isn’t about the music at all, but all about the times that were a-changin’.

The film premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Ang Lee and Emile Hirsch publicised it.

The screenwriter and producer is James Schamus, whose screenplay is based on the memoir Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte.

It grossed under $10 million worldwide, making the $30 million film a box office disaster.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4635

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Author Elliot Tiber in 2009.