Taking Woodstock

This was Ang Lee’s prior to The Life of Pi.  It didn’t get a great run in the cinema. I now know why.  It is a strange fish, almost documentary-like at times or a sort of behind-the-scenes of the Woodstock festival and how the family which ran a run-down motel right near Yasgur’s farm, ended up being the hosts of many of the workers behind the scenes.  Added to that you have the negotiations to use the place and we see many scenes of the throngs of people doing all sorts of things and simply gathering in a call for peace and love.  It seems like a commemoration of all that and it catches a certain mood but how real it was I don’t know.  Certainly, it was quite a job for the film maker to coordinate all this because much of it is extras and not paintshop add-ons.  I think Lee goes some way towards describing the sheer historical importance of the event in terms of a change in cultural values in the US.

However much of the film also revolves around nerdish Elliot and his entrepreneurial efforts, his coming out, his crazy Jewish mother with the Nazi fixation (overdone  Imelda Staunton) and a few other characters, the most interesting of which is the transgender security guard Vilma played by Liev Schreiber. This comic slant does get rather tired and Demetri Martin as Elliot is not quite interesting enough to hold our attention.

All that said, it is an easy watch – but just doesn’t rank as a great film

★★

Life of Pi

I don’t know if this will be one of the films of the year but at this stage it is a real front runner.  It passes my first test; that of wanting to see it again and I find it odd that many critics got lost in the superb 3D effects and found that it was not much of a story.  I haven’t read the Booker Prize winning novel that spawned this but it is pretty obvious that the film works on numerous levels.  It is a superb spectacle cinematographically (credit to Claudio Miranda) with computer generated images of rare quality and beauty.  It is an amazing adventure story of survival involving a boy and a wild tiger on a liferaft,  And it is a reflection on storytelling, what we want to tell and what we want to listen to.  Finally, there is a whole dimension related to faith, religion and each species desire to survive.  We are in the middle of a story and Ang Lee directs and tells it to us like a fairytale or a fable.  We are supposed to suspend belief in parts because it is precisely the unexpected that gives us lessons.  Suraj Sharma as the teenage Pi and Irrfan Khan as his adult self do great work in the lead roles. 

I felt quite exhausted by the end of the movie but felt that I had seen a very well made film that was different and food for thought.

★★★★