{"id":659048,"date":"2026-06-26T09:00:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659048\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:00:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:00:35","slug":"glastonbury-the-movie-review-thirty-years-on-the-sunset-of-a-hippy-dream-in-all-its-glory-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/659048\/","title":{"rendered":"Glastonbury the Movie review \u2013 thirty years on, the sunset of a hippy dream in all its glory | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Glastonbury in a fallow year, anyone missing their dose of West Country bacchanalia will have to settle for this handsome documentary, remastered in 4K and rereleased for its 30th anniversary. Shot at the 1993 festival, it serves as a heady curative to today\u2019s digital saturation: no mobile phones, no corporate logos, just tens of thousands of people unselfconsciously having it large in one of those blessed years when the sun god smiled on the Glastonbury populace. If the film wasn\u2019t time-stamped enough by the copious tie-dye, white-boy dreads and acid jazz on display, a youthful Dexter Fletcher seems to feature in approximately 18% of the footage.<\/p>\n

The film is less purposefully structured than Julien Temple\u2019s 2006 tribute Glastonbury<\/a>, whose multi-decade collage was corralled into thematic sections. Directors William Beaton, Robin Mahoney and Matthew Salkeld simply ride it out with the punters on a chronological three-day stint, alternating meanderings through the camp with choice excerpts from the stage. There are welcome reunions with acts unlikely to have bothered your Spotify feed of late: an imperial rendition by Stereo MCs of their big hit Connected, a lithe, pre-fame Verve slinking through Gravity Grave, and a cavorting Porno for Pyros. With the cacophony bottled in frequently used split-screen, eavesdropped snatches of conversation float over the soundtrack. One Monty Python-drunk wag hawks imaginary wares to passersby: \u201cLark\u2019s vomit! Pig\u2019s bladders!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If the Temple film was the view from the stalls, this offers main-stage energy at times. Shot partly in Panavision CinemaScope, some of the sequences are transportingly beautiful, alternating between Mad Max-style ramshackle grandeur as they weave through the throng, and arcadian tableaux that suggest the original hippy spirit was still alive in 1993. But the writing is on the wall \u2013 or at least on the hot-air balloon, plastered with a giant Converse ad, that drifts into one shot. Perhaps even this film is part of the beginning of the self-conscious representation, commodification and media packaging of the festival that pushed it into a new era. It\u2019s almost shocking to witness the original state of grace here.<\/p>\n

Glastonbury the Movie is in UK cinemas from 26 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Glastonbury in a fallow year, anyone missing their dose of West Country bacchanalia will have to settle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-659048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}