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Taking Woodstock review
:. Director: Ang Lee
:. Starring: Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber
:. Script: James Schamus
:. Running Time: 1:50
:. Year: 2009
:. Country: USA
:. Official Site: Taking Woodstock
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Ang Lee has an impassioned and at times aggravating way of moving from one genre to another. From Brokeback Mountain to The Hulk, along with The Ice Storm, his films never cease to amaze-though it's difficult to recognize his own style. With Taking Woodstock, he takes advantage of the audience and takes them on a small acid trip, giving them a good puff of a cigarette that makes them giggle, without descent or danger and without consequence or after effects. Because in this film, the audience laughs a lot and has a good time as if among friends, but once the psychotropic effects wear off, it's over. Without being a Fear in Loathing in Woodstock, the film manages all the same to revive the spirit of goodwill generated by an event which broke through all musical barriers.
As for the famous festival, you won't see anything. As for the music the mythical groups produced there-you won't hear anything either.
Though the film attempts to retranscribe the spirit of the time, the energetic freedom in which a whole generation threw itself in a time of trouble marked by conflicts in Israel and Vietnam, it above all tells the story of a family, under the angle of the — almost screwball-like — comedy. That of Elliot, young New Yorker with the look of delayed teenager, a failed artist who returns home to try to save his parents' motel. Upon learning that a neighboring smalltown refused to accomodate a large festival, he contacts the producers to propose they move the event to his godforsaken place. In a few days, thousands of hippies invade the region. Elliot takes advantage to emancipate himself from the yoke of his parents through a journey in which he will finally be able to be himself.
Caricature is drawn to the extreme, notably in the case of the Jewish mother (Imelda Staunton) whose dialogues sound like movie quotes, the characters, inspired by true protagonists, deteriorate with equal goodwill : from the Vietnam vet traumatized by the horrors of war to the débonnaire transvestite (campily played by Liev Schreiber, completely at ease in his colorful dress and under a blond wig), to the crazy theatre troupe. This gallery of portraits functions as a psychedelic kaleidoscope of the various components of hippy spirit.
Alternating traditional filming with formal quasi-documentary formal treatment, and mixing in certain sequences with gimmicks from 70's films with the help of split screens and moving shots, the mise en scene tries to be rock'n'roll and dynamic. In the end, this psychadelic family comedy is smoked quietly with the sound of a good Stones album.
Moland Fengkov
 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
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