The Glastonbury music festival began in 1970 as kind of an English answer to Woodstock, but in the nearly four decades since has far eclipsed that legendary event, becoming an annual gathering that attracts 300,000 people, enough to stock a city. There is undoubtedly a fascinating documentary to be had out of such a history.
's frustrating Glastonbury is not it. Overlong, unfocused, and shallow, it is less a film than a test of endurance. Temple himself brought crews to several of the post-millennium festivals, which explains why most of the musical acts skew toward the current: Coldplay, Babyshambles, Radiohead, Bjork, Pulp, a grandfatherly Ray Davies, and a still-energetic 60-ish David Bowie.
The filmmaker was able to get footage of some earlier performers as well, including The Velvet Underground, but for some reason he lavishes more attention on a 1971 performance by flower-child folksinger Melanie, who repeatedly screeches, "There's a chance peace will come!" Well, yes, once she stops caterwauling, it might.
But for Temple, music takes a backseat to people-watching.
Few of the acts get in an entire song. Instead, the film, which is well over two hours, is mostly taken up by shots of the crowd, not so much of the fans listening to the music (although there is some of that), but more of them "performing" themselves. A more disciplined filmmaker could have made a film just out of that, because it is intriguing how many people seem drawn to Glastonbury not from any great love of music, but as a place to indulge their own exhibitionistic and narcissistic tendencies.
That even makes sense in a way, since to attend for the music must be a heartbreaker how much is anyone going to actually hear in a crowd that large, and what are the odds of anything resembling decent sound in an open-air venue like that? But Temple contents himself to be a voyeur, never engaging anyone, and it does not take too long for all of the naked hippies and self-professed freaks to become mind-numbing bores.
Another fascinating avenue goes unexplored in the contrast between the festival's beginnings and its current state.
Farmer Michael Eavis is on hand in both archival footage and new interviews. But while Temple notes the changes over the years, he never challenges Eavis or even particularly emphasizes the Big Brother aspects of the current festival, except perhaps as comedy, as security guards chase would-be gatecrashers through the woods.
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