Arts and Lifestyle Wednesday Presented by The Exit Room of Lee's Summit-A Big Heart Helps a Small Movie
We are getting a whole lot of Woodstock right now. The 50th anniversary of the iconic music festival just passed, and Woodstock once again is in the spotlight. Every milestone anniversary has generally come with fine looks at the one-of-a-kind event which spawned many other similar festivals, but will never truly be replicated. Organically growing from a small idea to an out of control landmark, it is prime territory for study.
Many, many fine efforts have detailed the upstate New York three- day festival, which elevated or launched iconic careers, and served as a representation of a generation. From the original documentary, to excellent ones just produced, to fine feature films like 2009’s “Taking Woodstock” starring Demetri Martin, you can wallow as much as you like in the 1969 treasure.
So, an independent film is taking on a lot when it explores this territory, which “Woodstock or Bust” does with a great heart, and mixed success. It is, in the end, not a story about Woodstock itself, but the inspiration of it.
Leslie K. Bloom’s film centers on Meryl (Meg DeLacey) and Lorian (Willow Shields), two seventeen-year-olds from Portland, Oregon. They are close friends and musical partners in a duo yet to be named. Meryl writes the music and lyrics, Lorian is the feisty dreamer. Meryl’s Mom Sophia (Lisa Skvarla) is an opera singer of some accomplishment, who, in one of the early scenes in the film, stomps on her daughter’s aspirations to explore a career in music by bluntly telling her “You don’t have it”.
We all know that is the worst way to slow down the ambitions of a teenager, so soon, mostly fueled by the precocious Lorian, the girls hatch a plan to head to Woodstock and be discovered. They arrange a fundraising party at Meryl’s home which, of course, gets out of control, and just in time for Mom to come home and see all the damage. This leads her to order daughter to head to church camp for two weeks, and Lorian agrees to go along, even though she is Jewish. Well, they don’t really agree to do anything but use the camp trip as a handy excuse to follow their dream and head off to Woodstock.
There are issues with any independent film with a low budget and some of those outstrip the ambitions of the movie. The original music theatrically penned by Meryl is actually fine, but the use of covers of iconic songs of the time that would be featured at Woodstock are less effective. It would have been better to just use an original score of music that had the feel of the times.
Some of the period detail is quite good, some of the haircuts and use of language are a bit off. Bonus points for the pull tabs on the can of “Tiller” beer. The film is at it’s best when it sticks to basics, which in this case is the relationship of the two friends. DeLacy is a highlight as Meryl, a thoughtful and low-key young lady with plenty of soulful beauty and charisma. Those attributes create tensions between the two friends, as Lorian feels slighted in pursuit of boys, who always seem to gravitate to Meryl. That seems a bit forced, seeing as Lorian is quite lovely and has a big personality. Sometimes a bit too big for Shields in a part where she has a lot to do. She is betrayed at times by the writing, but in the end carries much of it off well.
The road trip begins, and it includes all the standard paint-by-the- numbers challenges. Car trouble that leads to an encounter with a perverted mechanic, drug episodes, offbeat hitch hikers, and run-ins with the police. The latter is the result of a chance encounter at a funeral with Nick (Teddy Van Ee), who presents himself as “Mick”, an exchange student from Liverpool, who invites him over to his “pad”, and entices the girls to drop acid, then wangles his way onto the trip.
Nick appears to overdose in the back seat of the car soon after, and this results in a fight between the girls, and Meryl takes off with Nick, in Lorian’s car. Nick is actually an underage runaway, and police are alerted, and eventually all are hauled off to a Utah jail. No, they haven’t made it very far.
The movie picks up steam and quality as the dramatic action focuses on the trip, the girl’s relationship, and their ambitions. It gets bogged down when heavy-handed political polemics are attempted, and when the focus is attempted to be broadened.
The character parts of the adults of the film are professionally done, and the technical aspects of the movie are solid, in keeping with a lengthy and accomplished career by Bloom as an assistant director. The film has debuted on digital platforms, and won some awards at smaller film festivals.
Very watchable and pleasant, it is a bighearted film that generally overcomes it flaws, and provides a different kind of ode to Woodstock and its generation.
