May 2007

Glastonbury (Director: Julien Temple, UK, 2006): For those on my side of the Atlantic who are not familiar with it, the Glastonbury Festival is England’s ver­sion of Woodstock and Burning Man rolled into one. Over the course of a long weekend each June, the pas­toral set­ting is overrun with per­form­ance artists, buskers, ravers, rockers, stoners and just about anyone in the UK with an ounce of eccent­ri­city. Oh yeah, and bands. It began in 1970, when farmer Michael Eavis organ­ized a fest­ival for a few hun­dred hip­pies. Recently, it’s grown in attend­ance to over 150,000 people. Along with that growth has come some unwel­come changes, such as the increasing pres­ence of cor­porate spon­sors, and, most not­ably in the film, the pres­ence of a security wall that sur­rounds the entire prop­erty. The fence was con­structed in 2001 after ongoing prob­lems with gate­crashers, but the extensive security appar­atus, including the wall, security cam­eras, and a sub­stan­tial force of security police, seems at odds with the spirit in which the fest­ival was founded. This in itself could have made a com­pel­ling film. But it’s not this film.

Instead, dir­ector Julien Temple (The Filth and the Fury) aims for a more impres­sion­istic exper­i­ence, using a mix­ture of ama­teur and pro­fes­sional footage shot over more than thirty years to give the viewer an idea of what it feels like to be there. While this con­veys some of the mix­ture of emo­tions attendees must feel, it’s slightly dis­or­i­enting. Organizer Michael Eavis pops up in footage from the 70s until the present, but we only gradu­ally figure out who he is. As well, trying to cram as many bands from as many eras as pos­sible into the film means that there isn’t a com­plete per­form­ance from any of them. And though there is a lot of endearing eccent­ri­city on dis­play, the film seems to revel in it just a bit too much, at the expense of con­veying any coherent inform­a­tion about the fest­ival and its history.

For example, there is a fas­cin­ating inter­lude in the middle of the film when Eavis allows the itin­erant “Traveller” com­munity to par­ti­cipate in the fest­ival for a number of years. But by 1990, he has to throw them out after their com­munity dis­putes erupt into violent fights during the fest­ival. Just a bit of standard doc­u­mentary expos­i­tion would have been wel­come here. Same for the issues of security and sponsorship.

As it is, the film feels true to the spirit of anarchy that char­ac­ter­ized the festival’s begin­nings, and although it’s over­long at 138 minutes, it cer­tainly com­mu­nic­ates some of the exhil­ar­a­tion and con­fu­sion that make fest­ival­goers risk the (strong) pos­sib­ility of tor­ren­tial rains and knee-deep mud each year.

(7/10)

Tagged as: Documentaries, DVD, music

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