“Taking Woodstock” vies for the prize
Ang Lee enters the Competition with "Taking Woodstock," a new vision of the legendary rock festival.
Twelve years after his Best Screenplay award for Ice Storm, Ang Lee returns to the Croisette to present Taking Woodstock in Competition. It refers, of course, to the famed three days of love, peace, mud, and music which took place in 1969. Based on the book by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte, Taking Woodstock : A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life, the film merely tells "a tiny piece of that story, from a little corner of unexpected joy that happened almost by accident and which helped this incredible event take place," according to producer James Schamus, who adapted the book.
Indeed, we see history unfold from Elliot’s initially discouraged viewpoint. Busy reinventing himself as a Greenwich Village interior designer, he learns he must return upstate to keep the bank from foreclosing on his parents’ dumpy motel. When he hears that a neighboring town has refused to host a hippie music festival, he jumps on the telephone. Three weeks later, he finds himself swept up by an adventure that will overwhelm him and his whole generation.
"Taking Woodstock is the last moment of innocence, director Ang Lee muses. After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy – and one without cynicism. It’s also a story of liberation, honesty, and tolerance – and of a ‘naïve spirit’ that we cannot and must not lose."
