Well, fuck-a-duck. I had been excited for this pull because Cuckoo’s Nest was a really good movie and yet a relatively boring review, but that’s me being my own worst fucking critic. But I was hoping for crap here because as soon as I saw Liev Schreiber dress as a woman (the role he was meant for), I got all excited to rip the ever-living fuck out of a bong-residue encrusted, braindead, “peace, love, dope” over-glorification of a drunkenly dysfunctional movement, but eventually realized “oh fuck, this is a well-crafted celebration of a bong-residue encrusted, braindead, ‘peace, love, dope’ and drunkenly dysfunctional movement.” God damn you Focus Features, you assholes.
Luckily, there were parts of it I despised with a fiery passion (that burns deep with-in my soul just wanting to be free of the tyranny of responsibility and logic and, ah, god damn it, I can feel the winds of change a-blowin’ already). This movie tried to be funny…and failed, miserably (like this blog sometimes). It was cabernet-dry American wit, which we don’t respond to mixed with stupid sight-gag and blatant ignorance humor, which I don’t respond to…unless that’s all the movie is trying to do (like Zoolander or Anchorman or...Anything with Will Ferrell In It except Stranger Than Fiction). Between poorly executed redneck jokes, worsely executed hippie jokes, and even miraculously worsely executed Dan Fogler jokes (/acting/overall reason for being), Taking Woodstock just fell short on what it looked like it was trying to be: a comedy.
But take a fan into the fog of novelty-gag-writing and movie-trailer fodder and you’ll actually find a film with a surprising amount of heart, depth, and understanding of a movement that had an uncanny ability to find a place for everyone…if you didn’t mind sleeping in a tree. This movie wasn’t an analysis, a revitalization, or even a plea for acceptance of the Hippyism movement to a group of people whose only experience with Hippyism is in the game “Fluxx,” but a wonderful celebration of what being around it had the ability to do. As swarms of people flooded the small city of Whitelake where moronic CoC President Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) proclaimed that he would “free all the music” not realizing the financial connotations in that statement, the fears of what to do with a million people in a small town that can’t hold them all seemed to disappear and the bong-residue encrusted, braindead, “peace, love, dope” and drunkenly dysfunctional atmosphere took over and let the whole world click in what should have been a place of chaos.
Taking Woodstock spent little time focusing on the logic of the situation at hand because it knew it would just get its ass kicked trying to explain it and if you could read all the words on the box art, you probably were in no position to try to comprehend anything anyway. It didn’t even waste its time with the music, it merely focused on the gathering and that’s why I enjoyed it so damn much because there was a certain point where nothing about it seemed artificial. Enemies becoming friends, love’s triumph over all, cares, worries, woes finding no place to call home in the land of peace and tranquility, tolerance for…yeah…Liev-fucking-Schreiber dressed as a woman, none of this was shoved in our faces with some sort of dulling narration or over-arching story that conveniently tackled all of these issues in one-fell swoop. You just got lost in it, and even though this was the tale of Elliot’s handling of a festival he didn’t really understand, it didn’t seem to want to take you away from joy that consumed every blade of grass in that town and I respect its balance and patience and discipline to put it together and even wrap it up beautifully.
So alas, I can bitch and whine and complain about so much in this movie because I did not grow up in that time where Woodstock brought us to a little patch of freedom under the sun. I grew up in this time, where Burning Man brings us needlessly flamboyant, outlandish, “the aliens are coming” ritual celebrations that bring us to a little patch of freedom under, obviously, too much sun. And whereas Generation X and the Millennials have become comfortable with structure, order, and analysis in everything we see, from series-literature with books written to understand their meanings and exploit their inconsistencies, to organizational tools like smartphones, computers, and Facebooks inside of Facebooks to manage our lives, to cinema with blogs and forums predicting and studying release dates months in advance for the movies we love or love to hate, Taking Woodstock takes an entirely different, and blissfully refreshing detour away from the clutter and chaos and just decides to run free for a while.
Despite its struggles with humor, it took very little away from the movie and I give it a stronger than expected 8 out of 10.
Well, I may have to give this one a try. The movie had been out a couple of years when I read the book, which is almost 2 separate stories: the happening at Woodstock, and Elliot's gay "sexual awakening", and the book is pretty graphic in spots while Elliot learns his way around a dick. I got the impression in your intro that "Brokeback Mountain" isn't one of your faves, but I love it, and I knew Lee could capture the drama, no problem...just wasn't sure if he was up to blissed-out hippies frolicking in the Age of Aquarius as well. But it sounds like he did, and really- how can I possibly pass up something with "Liev-fucking-Schreiber dressed as a woman"?
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