Directed by:
Michael WadleighCast:
Joan Baez, Roger Daltrey, Arlo Guthrie, Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon, Harvey Mandel (more)Plots(1)
1969 was a year unlike any other. Man first set foot on the moon. The New York Mets won the World Series against all odds. And for three days in the rural town of Bethel, New York, half a million people experienced the single most defining moment of their generation; a concert unprecedented in scope and influence, a coming together of people from all walks of life with a single common goal: Peace and music. They called it Woodstock. One year later, a landmark Oscar-winning documentary captured the essence of the music, the electricity of the performances, and the experience of those who lived it. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (2)
Great music, quality weed, a flower in the hair and some space for half a million people, that's all you need to organize the biggest and most memorable music event in history. Speaking for myself, if I had a time machine, I would head to the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival with a bunch of friends right after dealing with Hitler. A unique documentary that for three and a half hours throws you into the loving atmosphere of the flower power and partly introduces you to the legends of the music of that time, which was so beautiful and specific. I don't give it full marks only because the long musical numbers on TV don't have the same effect as live, and in my opinion a bit of trimming would not be a bad thing – though that wouldn’t be the real Woodstock. 85%
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There's just not much to add to this documentary. Besides having absolutely brilliant editing and the use of multiple images simultaneously, it is primarily a beautiful record of what the era was like and what its music was like. The music is still amazing, and those values... they are still being ignored. The rebellion didn't help much, but we can hope that something similar might succeed again someday.
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