A Walk On the Moon (1999)

A WALK ON THE MOON  (1999)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Tony Goldwyn
    Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, Liev Schreiber,
    Tovah Feldshuh, Anna Paquin, Bobby Boriello
Anybody who ever tried to get it on in the back seat of a Studebaker will be able to relate to the scene in this movie where Diane Lane and Liev Schreiber struggle to do that. They play Pearl and Marty Kantrowitz, a going-on-middle-aged couple whose dreams and ambitions and passion have faded with the day-to-day reality of work and marriage and kids. It's the summer of 1969, and they're at a family camp in upstate New York, and a couple of  landmark cultural events are about to transpire. In July, Neil Armstrong will walk on the moon, and in August, coincidentally not far from the camp, a little outdoor music festival is going to take place. At the same time, while Marty keeps getting called away to work - he fixes televisions - Pearl catches the eye of a counterculture hunk who sells ladies' blouses out of a customized bus, and he catches hers. The "blouse man" is played by Viggo Mortensen, and to Pearl he represents everything she feels she's missed. They end up in the bus, making out during the moonwalk. (It has more room than the Studebaker, and anyway, Marty's taken the Studebaker back to the city.) They go skinny-dipping. They go to Woodstock. And, of course, there are consequences, and confrontations, and guilt. Great, heaping piles of guilt. The melodramatics kick into high gear toward the end, when Marty learns what's going on. At the same time, it's not hard to imagine where these characters are coming from, or why they behave the way they do. It's where Douglas Sirk meets the Age of Aquarius. The Dead, Big Brother, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan are just some of the artists who turn up on the soundtrack - a more evocative late-'60s playlist would be hard to find - and the songs and stage announcements at the festival sound like actual audio from Woodstock.