Alec Baldwin on ‘Taking Woodstock’ and the event itself

I saw Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock” some weeks back and it landed okay for me.  It’s not top tier Lee, it’s not a powerful piece of work.  It features a rather over-the-top supporting performance from Imelda Staunton that, had it been reined in a bit, could have been in the awards discussion.  But on the whole (despite being too long — like most movies these days) I was taken in by its atmosphere.

I don’t hold Woodstock in any real reverential light, of course.  I wasn’t there.  I don’t know the impact.  And I in fact find myself relieved to read some revisionist reactions to the event that have attempted to shake some of the poignancy out of the thing.

But still, Lee captured something with the film and I think it was brave to willfully ignore the concert itself and focus on the way a moment affected one guy and his family.  That’s what Lee is best at, after all.

Anyway, I came across this blurb from Alec Baldwin at The Huffington Post today and thought I’d share:

I saw a screening of Ang Lee’s new film Taking Woodstock last night. Lee is a great filmmaker and this small, delicate movie is quite good. I have listened to a lot of Woodstock-ology these past few weeks as we mark the 40th anniversary of the event. Some of the commentary has been downright weird. Tom Ashbrook of WBUR did a segment on the event and he seemed to dismiss or reduce its significance with each call he took. I like to think that before there was Facebook and Twitter, Woodstock exemplified what “social networking” was in the late 1960s. Young people got together to, like, y’know… hang out.