Director Ang Lee (C) and his wife Janice Lin (L2) have a group photo taken with US actors Demetri Martin (R2) and British actress Imelda Staunton (L) on the red carpet as they arrive for the screening of the film "Taking Woodstock" at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 16, 2009. "Taking Woodstock" competes with other 19 films for the prestigious Palme d'Or which will be awarded on May 24.

"Taking Woodstock," Ang Lee's Cannes Film Festival entry, presents a loving glimpse of the behind-the-scenes hijinks that resulted in the gloriously sloppy music fest.

"Taking Woodstock" shows the summer-long buildup to the 1969 rock ‘n’ roll gathering that lured half a million free spirits to a rainy, muddy patch of farmland.

Woodstock "has a symbolic meaning to me. It's the innocence of a young generation departing from the old establishment and trying to find a more refreshing way, more fair way, to live with everybody else," Lee said Saturday before the Cannes premiere of "Taking Woodstock."

"It was dirty, filthy. It was actually a mess," said Lee, a best-director Academy Award winner for "Brokeback Mountain."

"But you have to give those kids, those half a million kids credit, that actually, they had three days of peace and music. Nothing violent happened. I think that's something. I don't know if we can pull that off today."

It's Lee's lightest film since the mid-1990s, when he made the romances "Sense and Sensibility," "Eat Drink Man Woman" and "The Wedding Banquet."