Glastonbury

With well over a hundred thousand attendees per year, The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is a famed counterculture musical event held in the English countryside not far from where the mystical Neolithic monument, Stonehenge, is located. Comparisons to Woodstock are clearly inevitable, but whereas Woodstock was basically a one-time thing, The Glastonbury Festival has been an annual event dating all the way back to 1970. Some of the styles and attitudes may have changed over the years, but the spirit of free love, political consciousness-raising, New Age mysticism and sheer unadulterated rebellion for which the festival is famous still remains.

Julien Temple, the director of the documentary entitled simply, "Glastonbury," brings an almost patchwork quality to her film, indiscriminately splicing together grainy footage from the earlier festivals with far clearer images from the much more recent past. She doesn't identify which year any particular sequence is from, so one minute we'll be watching hippies and flower-children "doin' their thing" in the meadows and the mud, followed the next by spike-haired punk-rockers head-banging their way into mind-altered oblivion.

The glue holding this excessively long, frequently repetitious and somewhat unwieldy film together is Michael Eavis, the idealistic yet deeply pragmatic festival organizer whose running commentary illuminates the history behind Glastonbury that he himself lived through and indeed helped to create. He discusses the changes he's seen in the participants over the years, acknowledges some of the more crassly commercial aspects of the event, and recounts a few of the less savory moments that have come close to spelling the end for the festival itself. The latter include the occasional run-ins he and his fellow celebrants have had with both the law and some of the more disgruntled residents of the town nearby.

But, clearly, the main reason for checking out "Glastonbury" is for the music, and, indeed, the festival has played host to a surprisingly eclectic mixture of musical performers and styles in the four decades since it first came into existence. Heavy metal, reggae, acid rock, electro, blues - all these genres and then some have found a home at Glastonbury. Some of the more well-known performers in the movie include Bjork, David Bowie, Coldplay, The Velvet Underground, Radiohead and Tangerine Dream. It's a pity that we are treated to little more than snippets of each of their acts, but even in small doses they create quite a tasty little smorgasbord for die-hard music lovers to sample.

Americans have never heard of Glastonbury. That may seem surprising to our British friends, but neither myself nor any fellow "Yank" I've ever spoken to had any idea of what it was. To all my fellow Americans out there, let me explain: It's the greatest kept secret in all of Britain. We don't know about it because there is no way for anyone to make any money telling Americans about it. The only way I can describe Glastonbury is "Woodstock, but cool...I mean really, really cool." I kept saying as I watched this film, I wish it were longer. First of all, as a rock film, it's better than any concert film you can name (even though we Americans only knew maybe 20% of the bands in the film). Better than Live Aid. Better than Live 8. Better than Knebworth. (Unfortunately, we can't see every performance in its entirety because there are so many of them.) And the fascination extends beyond the musical performances. It's a wonderful historical document, showing the evolution of British pop, from classic rock to punk to new wave to industrial to whatever they call today's music. Plus you get an look at the fashions and zeitgeist of each music. Hippy's to bikers to (what we Americans call) lot-scammers. Glostonbury shows nakedness, drugs, mud, music and chaos on a biblical scale, often times on the stage itself. It defies explanation. You can only see it to believe it. Woodstock happened only once. This goes on every summer, and the music doesn't suck. It's a crowning achievement for rock cinema and rock history. I've always wondered why the best rock comes from Britain. This film offers a clue. After the film was over, I walked out of the theater and wanted a hit of acid or a stiff drink. I wanted to smash a window and streak down the street. I wanted to light a fire, quit my job and join a rock band, renounce all my worldly possessions and grow out my hair. I wanted to stand up and cheer because this is a classic film. I didn't do any of those things, except the later, because I'm not a moron; but the film certainly conveys the liberating power of music and it's capacity to free the soul. I am so amazed that the Glastonbury festival even exists in this modern age of the puritanical War on Drugs. It couldn't exist in America. I'm glad it does exist, and I'm glad that this film exists because Bachanalia is no longer valued. It is seen as a threat, as a corruptive force rather than a liberating rite of passage. It is an experience everyone should have at least once in their life, and should the day come when the 'Forces that Be' close Glastonbury down, at least Temple's film will still be here to show future generations how wonderful life can be when lived with perfect unfettered collective freedom, (as Bowie says) "if just for one day."

35 years and still going strong this documentary from Julien temple tell the story of one of the worlds best festivals. From day one until the most recent the film is punctuated with memorable performances from acts like the prodigy, pulp, Joe Strummer, David Bowie, Bjork and Dr.John to name but a few. There are moments that gave me goose bumps, I suppose it helps that I was there, but none the less there are some amazing performances. As I started watching the film I began to feel it was very one-sided all great atmosphere and friendly smiles and I was pleasantly surprised when it told the side of Glastonbury we would all wish wasn't there, drugs, robberies (no mention of the shooting in 1996) and it even tells the story of the travellers that used to go to Stonehenge before they were stopped and it briefly touches on the battle of the bean field. Elsewhere it gives an overview of everything the festival has become apart from the music. Wild sculptures, musical jams, costumes and over the top performance art all is here along side the things you'd expect tie dye, silly hats and naked hippies. If you've ever been to Glastonbury then you will enjoy this loving take on all its mystical aspects, if you've never been you'll get to see just what you've missed. Music, mud and mayhem combine to make this an amazing inside glance at a world that only exists for five days once a year.

As the King of all music festivals takes a break in 2006, Temple's documentary is the closest thing you can get to the Glastonbury experience this year. It charts the history of the event, but is formed in a way that recreates the feeling of three days of fun rather than simply following chronology.

Two hours and twenty minutes might seem a long time for a documentary, but as you're kept smiling most of the way through, it's not in the least overbearing. We are treated to a number of musical highlights, but just as entertaining is meeting some of the weird and wonderful people that make the festival so unique. Particularly memorable are the three-man family team who run the tanker that sucks the, aherm, human waste out of the portaloos – such are the moronic faces of the two children, they really could be characters from Little Britain!

Glastonbury feels a lot like a home wedding video: If you were there, watching it back will probably be a fantastic experience. If not, expect to struggle in places.

The movie is a mix of music, background events and smiley faces in silly costumes. While the smiley faces are important if you intend to create a sense of the atmosphere, two hours of this starts to drag. As you might expect, there is a fair bit of music, although inevitably only a tiny proportion of all the acts that have appeared at the festival over the years. Some clever production techniques are used, such as mixing performances from different years together, and using specific songs to provide a narrative to other festival scenes.

But this subtle narrative is about all there is to guide the uninitiated through the movie. This might be acceptable for the music, but not the interviewees. The movie seems to revel in this to the point of arrogance: Early on, it includes a scene in which the organiser, Michael Eavis, is talking to festival goers who have no idea who he is - much like me at that point in the movie.

Background events and history are covered, but not very well explored. Genuinely interesting themes, such as the involvement of travellers and the growing commercialisation of the festival, are dealt with rather too quickly. There is a lot of social history here, which could have made this quite a challenging documentary. But perhaps if Glastonbury had covered these fully, I would be bemoaning the lack of music or complaining it didn't convey a festival atmosphere?