August, 1969. A 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, in upstate New York, plays
host to “an Aquarian Exposition: Three days of Peace and Music”. Thirty-two
acts play at the Woodstock Festival, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,
Sly and the Family Stone, The Who and the Grateful Dead; some 500,000 music
fans brave the rain, mud and disastrously inadequate toilet facilities and
the event goes down as a pivotal moment in America’s pop cultural history.
Meanwhile, in deeply repressed Taiwan, 14-year-old Ang Lee is studying for
his high-school examinations. There is an added pressure on this particular
student — his father is the head teacher of his school, the prestigious
National Taiwan First Senior High School. Lee, who was “not that cool as a
kid or rebellious”, says that he was aware of the events unfolding through
newsreel footage, but, like many Taiwanese at that time, he was ambivalent
about America’s countercultural movement.
“Taiwan was still very conservative. It was run militarily because we were at
the front line of the Cold War, protected by America, the leader of the free
world. So it was a conflicted feeling towards something like Woodstock or
the hippies in general. In some ways the older America provided the
old-fashioned good guys for our security. It was worrying to see the new
development, like they are going to throw it away. On the other hand, it’s
America. It’s fascinating, it’s really hip.”
Lee says of his rock education: “It was in the air, coming out of somebody’s
speaker. So I was aware of pop music, but just Top Tens mostly. Then
starting from college I was very much into classical music. I spent hours
and hours listening to music.
“By the time I got to pay attention to pop music, I was probably too old for
it. I think after you are 25, you can’t follow it. There’s a shut-off
point.”
Isn’t it perhaps a curious choice for a director who says that he “was never a
pop person” to make Taking Woodstock, a film set against the backdrop of the
most famous rock music festival of the 20th century? Arguably no more than
it was for a director known for his elegant literary adaptations (Jane
Austen’s Sense And Sensibility, Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm and Daniel
Woodrell’s Woe To Live On, which became Ride With The Devil) to turn around
and make the effects-laden comic book movie, The Hulk.
Ang Lee’s film choices have always been remarkably varied. But disparate as
they might seem, there are thematic links between many of them. Like Ride
With The Devil (the American Civil War) and The Ice Storm (the 1970s, Nixon
and the loss of innocence), Taking Woodstock takes place at a pivotal moment
in history. Lee nods vigorously. He has just been introduced to the term
“high water mark” and argues in his heavily accented but melodic English
that, in terms of social history, Woodstock was just such a moment. “[High
water mark moments] just fascinate me. This one was so obvious — three
months after Woodstock there was Altamont, which we mention at the end of
the movie, which marked the end of the Sixties’ idealistic fresh energy. It
was more than peace, love, sex, drugs and rock’n’ roll. The idea of the
positive energy, the rebellion against the parental establishment —
Woodstock is where it all culminated.”
It’s clear that Lee has bought wholesale into the nostalgic romanticism that
shrouds the memory of Woodstock like a fug of patchouli. He draws parallels
between the collective optimism of the time and that following the election
of Obama. His own son skipped college to travel to Washington for the
inauguration, and Lee is obviously proud of the fact. “Shortly after the
movie was made, Obama got elected. So there is a new spirit but it’s very
different. I feel an optimism, but with scepticism. Our kids today, they are
not the same as the kids of this age. They elected Obama, which was a big
boost. They want to change the world we messed up for them. But they are
more purposeful, more sober.” The sunny innocence of the Aquarian age is
gone for good though, and that, according to Lee, is a cause for regret. “I
feel melancholy about it. I don’t mean about drugs or anything, just the
love, the sharing the spirit. That’s why it feels so treasurable.”
Taking Woodstock is adapted by Lee’s long-term collaborator James Schamus from
the memoir of Elliot Tiber, whose parents ran a motel in White Lake and who
claims to have been instrumental in Woodstock finding its eventual home on a
nearby farm. Lee first met Tiber backstage at a television chat show, where
the ebullient author bombarded him with an intensive two-minute pitch.
It’s not hard to see what appealed to Lee in the material: Woodstock is just
the backdrop, the real focus of the story is the Tiber family — the prism
through which we view this moment in history. In both its comic tone and its
focus on the family, Taking Woodstock has more in common with earlier films
such as Eat, Drink, Man, Woman and The Wedding Banquet than it has with his
more recent work. “I needed levity,” he says simply.
Lee has talked before about the common ground between Chinese and Jewish
families, but in this case the material struck a particular chord. Tiber’s
parents (played by Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman) were first-generation
Jewish émigrés who fled the Holocaust; both Lee’s parents moved to Taiwan
from mainland China in 1949 and his paternal grandparents were executed
during the Cultural Revolution.
Lee’s immediate family history has its own dramas. His father had expected Lee
to pursue a career as a teacher and regarded his son’s interest in the arts
as a disappointment. It was not until Lee came to the US to study, first
theatre at the University of Illinois and then film at New York’s Tisch
School of the Arts, that he became certain what he wanted to do with his
life. It took rather longer to convince his father that directing was the
right decision.
Although it’s clear from the beginning that the family drama is at the heart
of the film, it comes as a surprise just how much of a back seat the music
plays in this film. There are no re-creations of the live performances, and
the soundtrack is understated. But, says Lee, it was never the intention to
focus on the music. “Woodstock was larger than music. It was so gigantic, so
abstract an idea. Woodstock didn’t happen in Woodstock,” he says, sounding a
little like a zonked-out hippy trying to explain the vibe.
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