It’s 1969, and Elliot Tiber, a down-on-his-luck interior designer in Greenwich Village, New York, has to move back upstate to help his parents run their dilapidated Catskills motel, the El Monaco. The bank is about to foreclose; his father wants to burn the place down, but hasn’t paid the insurance; and Elliot is still figuring how to come out to his parents. When Elliot hears that a neighbouring town has pulled the permit on a hippie music festival, he calls the producers, thinking he could drum up some much needed business for the motel. Three weeks later, half a million people areon their way to his neighbour's farm in White Lake, NY, and Elliot finds himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and popular culture, forever.
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if you go with the flow and you'll leave feeling free, man
Taking Woodstock is a personal story about a young man finding himself at a time when his generation was trying to do that throughout the world.Elliot's struggles and evolution through this unique event are another of Ang Lee's wonderfully textured allegories. That this fellow raised in China can so pointedly create the full emotional spectrum of the "youth movement" of that time is a testament to his artistry. If you have been to a multiple day festival before you will have a wonderful sense of nostalgia. This film completely captures how amazing people can be when they remove themselves from their day to day lives and get together with like minded strangers for a few days of complete freedom and joy. This film takes on a series of serious ideas with a light flair. Brilliant costuming, hair and make-up adds up to a rather busy attempt to explain the extraordinary: some cool happenings and a lot of sexual shenanigans. If you go with the flow and you'll leave feeling free, man.