制造伍德斯托克音乐节 英文影评  Taking Woodstock Movie Review

The kid who made three days of peace and music possible

Luckily I saw “Woodstock” again in April, so it was fresh in my mind while watching “Taking Woodstock,” Ang Lee’s entertaining film about the kid who made it all possible — in Woodstock, anyway. This is Elliot Teichberg, a young interior designer who leaves a New York career to return home to upstate New York and help his parents bail out their failing, shabby motel.

He’s already held outdoor “music festivals” at the motel, which have involved people sitting on the grass and listening to him play records. Now he learns a nearby town has refused a permit to the organizers of a proposed August 1969 rock concert. As the head of the tiny Bethel Chamber of Commerce, near Woodstock, he calls them and offers a permit. And history is made. What if Woodstock had been named after the town that turned it down, Wallkill?

Lee’s movie is so deliberately backstage that we never see any of the concert’s performances, although we hear them sometimes in the background. All is seen through the eyes of Elliot, who ignores local fears of a hippie riot and persuades local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) to make his acres available as the venue. Max and other people in the film, such as the Port-O-San man and a local couple with one son at Woodstock and another in Vietnam, are familiar from the “Woodstock” documentary.

But Lee and writer James Schamus aren’t making a historical pastiche. This is a comedy with some sweet interludes and others that are cheerfully over the top, such as a nude theatrical troupe living in Elliot’s barn, and Vilma, his volunteer head of motel security, a transvestite ex-Marine played by Liev Schreiber. How does Schreiber, looking just as he usually does except for a blond wig and a dress, play a transvestite? Completely straight. It works.

The backstage cast of characters include concert organizer Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff) and Elliot’s buddy Billy (Emile Hirsch), a returned and strung-out Viet veteran. Also loud and omnipresent is Elliot’s mother, Sonia (Imelda Staunton), and her long-suffering husband, Jake (Henry Goodman). Sonia, a Russian immigrant paralyzed by fears of poverty, has run the motel into the ground with lack of maintenance and such policies as charging $1 for a towel. Descended upon by a busload of organizers, she converts rooms into “triples” by hanging sheets from the ceiling. Her shrill greed cuts through all the peace and love until, finally even she warms up.

Instead of showing much more than glimpses and edges of the concert, Lee shows the local impact as “Woodstock Nation” swamps little Bethel. He also shows the goodwill of most of the locals and police, who join in the spirit. There’s a remarkable shot, which must have been hard to stage, of Elliot getting a ride on a police motorcycle past a backup of hundreds of cars, vans and pedestrians; this reminded me of the famous traffic jam in Godard’s “Weekend.”

I was reminded, too, of another film, Philip Kaufman’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” That film made remarkable use of pre-CGI special effects to seamlessly insert its characters into actual footage of the Prague demonstrations against the Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia.

What Lee does, apparently, is use footage from Michael Wadleigh's "Woodstock" (1970) and insert Eliot and others into it. I say "apparently," because I am informed he used no original footage at all. This is amazing, because It looks so remarkably convincing. The poignancy of Wadleigh's closing shots of the clean-up effort are mirrored here as Eliot joins in the aftermath.

Not many events of 40 years ago would inspire a feature comedy. Seeing the 1970 film on a big screen in 70mm in April at Ebertfest, with an audience including many who had never seen it before, was an affirmation of how timeless those “three days of peace and music” have become. “Taking Woodstock” has the freshness of something being created, not remembered. I saw a photo the other day of the young couple shown on the original soundtrack album jacket. Still married, still with their arms around each other.

My Great Movies essay on "Woodstock."

李安！李安！
 
先要用两个感叹号表达下对里李安新作的激动之情。今年戛纳，看到第六部电影，终于第一次感觉，时间愉快的过去了。
 
然后澄清关于此片的几个说法：1.这不是一部讲述音乐节本身的影片，全片甚至没有一支完整意义的乐队登台。2.这不是李安的第三部同志片，主角的小艳遇的确表明了他的取向，但同性感情不是故事的主线。3.这不是一部严肃、深刻的影片，至少不是一部貌似严肃、深刻的影片，它颠覆了李安之前作品的压抑和沉闷，故事流畅而情绪飞扬。李安的这部小片，也许不具金棕榈像，很多人也许会失望，而对我来说，则是惊喜。
 
诚如李安自己所言，在拍完《断背山》和《色戒》之后，《制造伍德斯托克》是他用来放松的一个小品。影片拍得情绪飞扬，满足了人们对那格神奇年代的向往，充满了伊甸园式的虚幻的美好，电影对音乐演唱会的唯一正面描述，是elliott和一对流浪的男女分享大麻，然后再山顶远远看了音乐节的全景，其中用华丽的彩色和魔幻的镜头表现了人物沉沦飞扬的状态。虽然再盛大的聚会最后都是一场虚空，垮掉除了能让我们躺倒，不能解决任何实际问题，但没有沉沦，哪来坚定，没有放浪，哪来自由？在好莱坞拍了这么久之后，李安终于能自由的用自己的方式解构和yy美国人的经典记忆，想必他也是认同这句话：能垮掉是幸福的。www.130q.com
  
《制造伍德斯托克》以音乐节创办人Elliot筹办音乐会为故事主线：他于1969年的夏天无意中在报纸上发现“伍德斯托克音乐节”原来的主办场地被撤销了，于是打电话给组织者并找到了新的场地，牵扯进这场20世纪最伟大的摇滚音乐节当中，而更重要过的是，在参与这个伟大事件的过程中，elliott本人和父母也重新梳理了家庭和个人的关系。在很多人的想像中，这部电影主题会是记录一个伟大的事件和一个伟大的年代，而事实上，这部电影却把一个宏大的历史背景当作一个个体人成长的注脚，举重若轻，这不正是李安所擅长的把戏么？
 
Elliott决定筹办伍德斯托克音乐节，原本是为了吸引客源，解决父母经营的motel的财务问题，但影片最后却探讨了elliott要“到哪里去”的问题。Elliott的父亲是一位保守、沉默、平淡的小镇居民，压抑的激情却在音乐节中得到了释放，而elliott的母亲则是一个顽固的守财奴，“她只相信现金，对于支票都缺乏安全感”，她对火爆的音乐节充满着复杂的感情。全片的高潮，是在elliott父母误食含有大麻的蛋糕之后，他们所表现出来的癫狂，完全解除了生活平时的压抑。而34岁的Elliott也开始正式思考离开家庭，正如他自己在台词中和父母强调的一样，他也许是34万来朝圣的嬉皮士中最单纯和干净的一个，可是对未来的迷茫却是一样的.
 

对美国人来说，伍德斯托克音乐节不仅仅是一个音乐节那么简单，3天45万嬉皮士的聚合，几乎零死亡的摇滚聚会，它更像是一个时代神话般的Icon，它是所谓的垮掉的一代记忆中最美好而纯洁的一部分。因此当李安选择这个题材的时候，就好象他当年去挑战莎翁的《理智与情感》，属于闯进了美国民族的精神私属领域。但是，任何故事，李安来拍，都是他的电影。
 
《制造伍德斯托克》此前在美国试映的时候，并没有取得一边倒的叫好，即使在戛纳放映之后，欧美的记者也给出了比较保守的评价。对西方人来说，伍德斯托克是一个更具时代意义的象征，应该像去年索德伯格拍《切格瓦拉》那样拍得沉静而宏大，即使镜头沉闷无聊那也是可以被原谅的。像李安这样用个体和家庭这样一个小的切口去表现，恐怕是他们不愿意看到和认可的，也许他们会觉得太轻浮。此外，电影对于音乐的表现的确太过吝啬，这当然跟李安电影角度选取有关，也可能和李安无法准确把握那个时代音乐精髓，刻意回避有关。还是不能两全的遗憾了。 

在《喜宴》和《断背山》之后，李安显然被定为“背背大师”了，因此《制造伍德斯托克》在此前的媒体关注过程中，同志题材一直是一个焦点。但从剧情看，尽管影片中也有一个异装的粗壮男人，但他和elliott只是友谊，而且表现的是对自由的追求：“我知道我是什么，别人是否知道我是什么有什么关系”。
 
《制造伍德斯托克》是根据音乐节创世人elliott的自传体小说改编，在原著中的确有很多他个人取向的内容：正是因为阴郁节崇尚自由的感召，一直没有出柜的他才向父母袒露实情。应该说这部分内容是很贴合李安要表现的主题，但从电影成片来看，李安似乎刻意淡化了这部分的内容，家庭故事在爱情故事之上，至于这样取舍的原因，还是发布会上去问问他本人了。

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