Looking backward is a wonderful way to spend time. Surrounded by fond memories that cast a golden haze, everything looks so much better. Reality gets lost in reminiscence, just as it does in "Taking Woodstock," opening today and painting the famous festival in kind and lovely colors – with only a couple of exceptions.
After "Brokeback Mountain" and "Lust, Caution," which dealt with complex stories and a lot of sex, Lee was obviously looking for an easier project. Enter the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. Exit a simple, almost-innocent view of the wild and wacky weekend, based on a memoir by Elliot Teichberg, using the pseudonym of Tiber, and played with a sort of ingenuous charm by Demitri Martin, obviously struggling with his homosexuality. Teichberg’s family owned the El Monaco, a shabby motel in White Lake that became what amounted to festival headquarters for the action in nearby Bethel.
This is not to denigrate Lee, whose skills were tested mightily by the sheer mass of people in the film, but he sticks to the mud and marijuana, doesn’t bother with the festival’s performances, seems satisfied with light-hearted entertainment.
And Lee gets a marvelous performance from Liev Schreiber as Vilma, a blond, long-haired cross-dresser and former Marine who decides he can handle security and help Teichberg grow up at the same time. He could win an Oscar nomination as a supporting actor. Eugene Levy is outstanding as Max Yasgur, who opened his dairy farm ("all my cows have names") to those seeking Nirvana, and so is Jonathan Groff as Michael Lang, the producer of the festival and a man who paves over problems with ease. Paul Dano and Kelli Garner also stand out as a loving couple in a VW who take our hero on a delightful trip. Emile Hirsch is moving as Billy, a high-school friend of Teichberg now mostly delusional after an Army hitch..
There’s quite a bit of nudity from the Earthlight Players, a troupe of hippie actors who hang out in the barn on the Teichberg property, but it’s innocent, too. There really was such a group. The only harsh, very disturbing note, comes from Sonia Teichberg, Elliot’s mother (a savage performance by Imelda Staunton), who is so crassly tasteless and greedy that she casts a dark shadow over all the lightness that James Schamus, the screen writer, can offer, and that Lee can transform to film. If this is how young Teichberg sees his Mom, well, this a job for Dr. Freud.
At multiple theaters.
–Joe