Movie Info
Movie Name: Woodstock
Studio: Warner Bros.
Genre(s): Documentary
Release Date(s): March 26, 1970
MPAA Rating: R
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From August 15 to August 17, 1969, a massive festival was planned at White Lake, New York. What started out as a paid event became the ultimate free concert and the lynchpin for a generation. The concert boasted some of the biggest performers at the time but events of the three days went down in history. The attendees, the people of New York, and the musicians came together for an event that was never recreated though people tried…and history was made.
Directed by Michael Wadleigh, Woodstock was a musical documentary. The film has been released and released multiple times in different versions. The original film ran over three hours but a director’s cut stretched over three and half hours. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature with nominations for Best Sound and Best Film Editing.
Row, Row, Row Your Boat!
It would be easy to say that Woodstock is all about the music, and it could have been simply a documentary of the concert. Instead of focusing on the music, the documentary makers tried to get to the heart of Woodstock…and they found something great.
The nice part of Woodstock is that everyone (for the most part) got along for three days. With such a large gathering of people, it feels like a recipe for disaster…especially in today’s standards. There were a few drug issues (don’t take the brown acid), but the kids largely were kids without hurting anyone.
The other aspect is the relationship between the kids and the people in town. Not everyone was happy with the huge influx of people into the small town, but many of the people that the crews talked to were actually happy or surprised by how well they got along with everyone. It is refreshing not to have such a positive intergenerational interaction.
Rock out, USA!
The movie does bank on great performances by lots of great performers (including people like Hendricks and Joplin who were lost too early). It also includes performances by people with long, prolific careers like The Who and Joe Cocker, but it is good to see them at such a young age. It is mixed with some fantastic editing (and great sound recording) that goes a long way to bring the whole experience to the viewer.
Watching Woodstock is both enjoyable and sad. It is enjoyable to see a great moment in music history but also U.S. history. The artists are young and fresh and everyone is having a good time. It is what also makes Woodstock sad. In 1994, young adults desperately tried to recreate the event for the 25th anniversary…but commercialism and changing times would not allow it. Woodstock became one of the biggest free concerts of all time after being invaded and despite an initial pushback, the producers were ok with the financial loss by creating something epic…something that will probably never be rivaled.
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