GLASTONBURY – FILM REVIEW

Its 2006 and Michael Eavis has declared this to be a “fallow year” with no festival, so we have to be a little more resourceful to get our Glastonbury fix for the year. Fortunately, this has been made very easy thanks to the release of Julien Temple’s film, “Glastonbury”, in April 2006.

The film was launched by a mini tour, with premieres in London, Bristol, Leeds and Glasgow. So we quickly snapped up tickets for the Bristol showing, to get a first look at whether our antics made it into the final cut!

The venue of the Colston Hall made it a little different from a normal cinema trip, with the luxury of having a few ciders, and also some free “Glastonberry” ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s. There was also the appearance of the Levellers, who ran through a quick 4 song acoustic set to get everyone nicely in the mood. Other planned treats included Brothers Bar pear cider and a speech by Michael Eavis, but sadly neither materialised.

The film is quite free in its form, although there a slight indications of a path from the beginning to the end of the weekend. It includes a lot of excellent footage from the early years of the festival, as well as some very modern shots, and the focus is very much the people enjoying the party, including but not dominated by the bands or the organisers. A documentary aspect is maintained through clips of several interviews with Michael Eavis, but Temple also skilfully includes footage from personal recordings sent to him, to show the experiences from across the site. Through these you get a decent history of the festival’s evolution, and also the changed make up of the crowd, from the peace-loving hippies of the 70s to the crazy insurance-brokers of the 00s. At times Temple appears to resent this change, but he then brings it round to show that by 2005 the festival is still as good as ever, despite all the differences.

Of course music is a huge part of the film, with extended appearances from Coldplay, Faithless, Radiohead, David Bowie and many more. The Bowie section where footage of his 1970 and 2000 appearances is inter-woven is particularly evocative. From the amount of laughter produced by the film you could be forgiven for branding "Glastonbury" a comedy, there’s certainly nothing like watching completely wasted people trying to function normally for entertainment. There’s also plenty of nakedness, both on and off stage!

The film inevitably has some imperfections, not least that 150 minutes it is something of an effort to stay comfortably seated throughout whilst enjoying a few ciders! Everyone has their own particular favourite aspect of Glastonbury, and it would have been impossible to please everyone, but the legend of the Cider Bus surely deserved an appearance. The absence of such a stalwart of the festival as John Peel is another fault, as years to come will show him as far more influential to the history of the event than the likes of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss.

But for festival fans, the general mood created by the film is just a contented grin, as you recognise familiar sights and sounds, and consider yourself lucky not to be experiencing certain familiar smells. Huge applause greeted the end of the film, along with impatience that there are still 14 months until we can return to Worthy Farm to add to the Glastonbury story, and hopefully get ourselves into the sequel..