Eric Stevenson
"Woodstock" is the longest documentary I've ever seen and the version I saw was three and a half hours long. I obviously didn't see the whole thing in one sitting. Anyway, it's very hard for me to review a documentary as I've never done that here before, but I will try as best as I can. This movie tells the story of the 1969 Woodstock festival. I'm not that much of a music buff. In this film, it's claimed that this was the largest gathering of people at the time. What's amazing is how this is filmed. There are many times where we actually see two scenes side to side and even a few where three of them are side to side. What's great is probably not so much the actual performances. It's the ordinary people who are briefly interviewed. They basically say that they should have no problems with the people going crazy at this festival as they're not hurting anyone. It's great to see everyone just playing around. While it's not something I would try myself, I loved seeing them slide in the mud.There was a surprising amount of nudity here. Again, they're not hurting anyone. This movie is a perfect representation of the sixties, or more specifically the late sixties. It's every bit as psychedelic as a history buff myself would envision. Making a documentary so long is what makes you feel like you're really in on the experience. Real life adventures just go on and on. I rarely watch documentaries, but I was glad to make an exception for this unique film. ****
Emil Bakkum
Documentaries about musical events do not really lend themselves to a review. However Woodstock was just as much a social event as a concert. For several days the fields changed into a temporary city. It is interesting to see how Michael Wadleigh displays and interprets the attitude of the crowd. He interviews the visitors, and asks them about their motives to be there. Most of them are barely grown people. Many simply follow the flow, but for others the festival is an opportunity to increase their wisdom of life. They arrive as groups and communes, and try to learn from each others experiences. There are spiritual meetings. There is recreation and fun, like the mud slides in the rain. But there are also social experiments, like nude swimming and even public drug (ab)use. They blow to make other people interesting. They may have read about the evils of drugs, and gave up reading. The cast of singers and song groups looks impressive. But to be fair, I did not like their music then, and in the film it looks truly poor and miserable. In many cases the appearance consists of screaming and physical convulsions. Today such a performance would not attract such an enormous crowd. It takes the drummers a minute to notice that their band has stopped playing. Joke: what is the difference between an electric guitar and a chainsaw? The grip. Probably it makes more sense to interpret the festival as a demonstration against war and violence. America was in the grip of the civil rights movement. Several charismatic leaders had been murdered. And most of all, there was the appalling war in Vietnam, which threatened the future of the male youth. On stage Joan Baez tells about the objection to military service of her boyfriend. If your life expectancy is just a few years, there is some cause for screaming and wild social experiments. The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears. By the way, why do soldier look so tired on 1 April? Because they just had a 31-day March. Actually Woodstock was a sad event. And Wadleigh must get the credit for managing to convey this message - which is a recommendation. Don't hesitate to leave a comment. I love it.
paudie
Surely this was filmed 100 years ago? It was certainly another world. The innocence and kindheartedness of nearly all the people in the film is what strikes this cynic the most.The promoters who accepted they were going to "take a big bath" when they realised they had to take down the fences and make it a free concert for safety reasons. The landowner who can't believe the amount of people who have come to his farmThe locals cheerfully giving food and water to the kids and commenting about how respectful they areThe kids going to a music festival but for some reason expecting and getting so much more - and then queuing to phone home and tell the parents they're okay! The performers who knew something special was happening and did their bit to make history. At more than 3 hours the film could have seemed too long but it doesn't as the performances and interviews with concert-goers mix perfectly. There are few interviews with the performers as the director recognises it was really all about the kids.It would be interesting to see present day interviews with people in the film to see their current day view on what happened at Woodstock but in the meantime we can only enjoy this living piece of history.
hitherto75
When "Woodstock" occurred, I was a 15 y.o French teenager. Watching the film again, yesterday, I've been stunned by its quality, its objectivity and its strength. It's much more than a "concert movie" (especially compared to the current ones, with their feverish cranes and cameramen moves). Michael Wadleigh and his crew really captured the spirit of the event, as it became obvious it was creating itself. They seem to be everywhere and give the spectator an incredible range of focuses and points of view. I've never been truly excited by the musical performances during the festival, but there are some great acts and the multi-screen editing set them perfectly off (funny to watch the contrast between the blues-country-rock white bands and the glitter-dance-sexy background singer bound "Sly and the family Stone"!). Glad that Janis Joplin's wonderful and sincere performance has been added in the director's cut... As someone else wrote here, one of the main revelation in this movie is how the attendees are young. It's really about American young people at a peculiar period in western history, when the "baby boom" brought a new, numerous generation "on stage". When western countries were really young, with lot of innocence. One (swimming) girl in the film stresses that. She says "we are gathering in many cities in the world" "we come over". And that's true : 3 days long, young people made Woodstock a unique event. They overcome global media hostility, long walk, crowded and muddy field, food shortage, etc (well, that's what youth is for!). Thanks to Wadleigh to have capture it (and thanks to the perfect re-mastering). PS : I'm sure that no full-of-money-movie-maker filming a musical festival these present days would make an interview of the-man-who-is-in-charge-of-the chemical-toilets (who has a son here and another one piloting a chopper in Vietnam)! A true mark of the 60's-70's era...Thierry Follain
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