Movie Review: Michael Wadleigh's Landmark "Woodstock" Documentary

There aren't many better words to describe the 1960's counter-culture "hippie" movement than Woodstock. The festival, attended by just under half a million young people, was a cry of outrage at the war and a complete embrace of brotherhood and the unity of man. The people immortalized in this documentary, from strung-out teenagers to the guy cleaning the Port-O-San, seem to be living in their wildest fantasies despite having nothing more than muddy grass and music for three days.

I guess it goes without saying that in the summer of 1969, a rock concert was promoted by young entrepreneurs on an upstate New York farm. A record-breaking 400,000 people attended, a crowd so large that highways had to be shut down. To feed, shelter, and care for these people, many volunteers came together in what became a completely non-profit event. Amongst the performers were Joan Baez, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix performing his iconic rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.

Director Michael Wadleigh filmed the festivities and his film, "Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music", has become a beloved time-capsule of the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. This new 40th Anniversary Edition released by Warner Home Video is only fifteen minutes shy of four hours, and it's bonus features contain over a dozen additional performances.

A reported 120 miles of footage was shot over the three days, using fourteen cameramen and a crew that included a young Martin Scorsese. In order to optimize all of this material, the film is edited with great innovation in having up to three split-screens at once. You get to see each performance from every angle, and meet two or three times the personalities. It's incredibly effective and stylish, and an overlooked gem in the history of film editing technique.

The film, due to it's length and the intensity of the performers, is fatiguing. I would have liked to see more of the non-concert footage in order to give larger breaks between what are incredibly emotionally exhausting performances, but still the film's unrelenting energy makes it a fairly easy four hours to sit through.

Although being atleast 3/4ths musical performance, "Woodstock" is more than a concert film. It's about community and an optimistic youth coming together to preach peace in a time where they felt their government was letting them down. Think of the intoxicating hope of the enthusiastic young people at the Obama acceptance speech in Grant Park last November, and then add in sex, acid, and mud: that about sums up Woodstock.