B

Despite the implication of the cutesy title, “Taking Woodstock” makes no attempt to assess the peace, love and music festival that was held in the Catskills of New York forty years ago this month. Like the event itself, Ang Lee’s film seems more a spontaneous happening than a rigorously organized work. In this case, of course, the scruffiness is hardly accidental, but it gives the picture a gentle warmth and easy charm that make it as pleasant, if as passing, as a warm summer breeze.

The picture, anyway, isn’t really about the music part of the festival at all. And that’s a wise decision. It’s difficult to imagine anything potentially more appalling than an attempt to recreate numbers done by the likes of Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker—let’s face it, does anybody really want to watch Val Kilmer impersonating Jim Morrison in “The Doors” again? And with Michael Wadleigh’s brilliant 1970 documentary (already more than three hours long, and expanded to nearly four in 1994) already available, why bother?

So Lee and his regular collaborator James Schamus leave the music-making in the background, showing us the stage only from vast distances and letting us hear performances only as whispers, and instead concentrate on the raucous but curiously sweet behind-the-scenes effort to mount the entire spectacle, giving a focus to the culture-changing wildness by focusing on Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), the uptight but loving son of immigrant motel owners Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman and Imelda Staunton), who invites the promoters to use his parents’ place for their undertaking after a nearby town pulls the plug on such a hippie endeavor. The motel land proves unsuitable, but the fields on a neighboring dairy farm owned by the accommodating, if hard-bargaining, Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) are perfect.

What follows is the story of Elliot’s liberation under the influence of the ever-expanding event. He’s secretly gay, but gingerly comes out of the closet. He takes his first acid trip when he wanders down from the motel to the festival site and a super-mellow California couple (Paul Dano and Kelli Garner) share their stash, and their van, with him. And he finally comes to terms with his parents, bonding with his father and freeing himself from the stultifying control of his abrasive mother after he learns that all the sacrifices he’d made to save their ramshackle operation from foreclosure hadn’t been necessary after all.

The picture is largely Elliot’s story, and Martin’s reserved, deadpan performance—which could too easily be mistaken for blankness—is just what the script orders. And he’s set off by the more extroverted characters that surround him. Goodman is so good that he makes you think of Peter Falk, down to the milking of his last teary scene with his son, and though Staunton has a rather thankless part as the take-no-prisoners-but-all-the-money Mrs. Teichberg, she’s unafraid to play it without winking at us (and carries off a poignant final scene, only just suggesting the source of Sonia’s hellish attitude). Levy sets aside his usual shtick in a laid-back turn as the clear-thinking Yasgur, and Dano and Garner have fun as the grooviest couple in sight.

But there’s also Live Schreiber, whose turn as a cross-dressing ex-Marine who offers his skills to the Teichbergs when it becomes evident they need a security detail is charmingly low-key. And Jonathan Groff, perfect as Michael Lang, the preternaturally calm and bemused producer of the festival. Richard Thomas, of all people, shows up looking like a young Kris Kristofferson as the smiling Reverend Don, hired by the promoters to build bridges to the suspicious locals. Only Emile Hirsch, as a soldier recently returned from Vietnam with severe psychological problems, amps up the volume a bit too much on occasion. But in the latter stages even he’s mellowed out, so to speak.

And that merely scratches the surface of a sea of colorful figures bobbing around in the mass of people drawn to the event. Lee captures the vastness of the result in a lovingly choreographed set-piece in which Elliott joins the parade trekking down the road toward the stage and is given a ride by a stern-looking but surprisingly helpful motorcycle cop, who confesses that he’d come to beat up some hippies but found himself disarmed by their good-natured attitude. The sequence rambles, like the whole film does (and I could have done without the win-wink allusion to Altamont as the coming end of the Woodstock vibe), but is such an affectionate tribute to the spirit of Woodstock—or what some folk remember so fondly about it—that it wins you over (you’re that cop, in other words). And Lee follows it up with the scene of Elliott’s trip, which not only includes the pro forma camera tricks to suggest the psychedelic effect of the drug but a lovely image of the huge crowd undulating on the hills like waves before the whole vision bursts briefly into a light show.

What you’ll leave the film with, in fact, is the sheer good feeling that so many participants took from the festival itself, and that’s Lee’s ultimate intent. His crew helps him capture the atmosphere without exaggeration—the production design (David Gropman), art direction (Peter Rogness), sets (Ellen Christensen De Jonge) and costumes (Joseph G. Aulisi) are all dead on, and Eric Gautier’s widescreen cinematography, abetted by Tim Squyres’ unhurried editing and Danny Elfman’s unobtrusive score, captures all the period flavor without prettifying it. The picture has a disjointed, spontaneous, even ragged feel but, like the semi-organized mess that was Woodstock itself, it works.

For Ang Lee, “Taking Woodstock” represents a divertissement, but it’s one we can all join hands and enjoy together with him. And no drugs are required.