Funny, sometimes, what we Americans deem to be our cultural touchstones.

Forty years ago, a bunch of kids congregated in a muddy field in upstate New York to listen to music. It probably didn’t seem like much at the time.

Back in 1969, America was a nation divided, either breaking out or breaking down, depending on your point of view. But what occurred that weekend on Max Yasgur’s farm has been heralded, by some, as one of the pivotal cultural events of America’s 20th century history.

Woodstock was one of many music festivals held that year— most uneventful. Too many other things were happening in 1969. A month earlier, American astronauts landed on the moon. Charles Manson had orchestrated the heinous Tate/LaBianca murders. Vietnam lingered with no apparent purpose. Rock ’n’ roll didn’t generate much interest on the 6 o’clock news.

For a multitude of reasons, Woodstock would be different.

“Taking Woodstock” is less about the iconic music festival than about a group of people caught in the headlights of its impending arrival. Demetri Martin plays Elliot, a young Greenwich Village artist who reluctantly returns to his family’s dilapidated motel near Bethel to help his parents make ends meet. Elliot also happens to be president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce and offers the necessary permit to the concert’s promoters after nearby Wallkill cancels the event.

What follows next is both cultural lore and bedlam.

What also follows is, to some extent (depending upon whom you ask) factual. Based on Elliot’s book of the same name, “Taking Woodstock” is a warmly empathetic account of those few days that, for many people, defined a generation.

But don’t let the trailers fool you. “Taking Woodstock” is neither a comedy nor a rock ’n’ roll retrospective; it’s a sometimes funny drama that swirls around the playful madness that Woodstock would ultimately become.

Director Ang Lee has concocted a gently pleasing comingof-age tale, a microcosm of those troubling times.

If you were around back then and didn’t like the growing pains, you’re not going to like this movie. If you look back in fondness, then “Taking Woodstock” may be a blast from the past you’ll enjoy.

In the rural upstate community of Bethel, things really hadn’t moved much in a generation or two. Young Elliot doesn’t sense or seek change; he’s simply at the right place at the right time. A cog in the machinery, as writers are fond of saying.

Immediately, many of the townsfolk panic, accusing Elliot of intentionally destroying their way of life. Back in ’69, many looked at hippies with fear and loathing, much as they did communists—both factions intent on destroying America’s traditional value system.

America. Love it or leave it.

“Taking Woodstock” offers a perspective—and offers it in a gently positive, liberal-minded light. One might accuse Ang Lee of bathing those few days in a fuzzy rose-colored hue . . . but I suspect Woodstock actually transpired in that sort of fuzzy, rosecolored (eventually mud-hued) reality.

Some 450,000 mostly young, middle-class folks paid $18 and thumbed or walked or VW-bused their way toward Bethel, had fun, cut loose, obeyed the laws (mostly) and then went home again.

The Establishment (ah, anyone remember that term?) tried to portray the event as a squalid, unsavory bacchanal, but as more factual, curiously honest reports filtered through the media, people began to look again at the event called Woodstock.

Which is exactly what Ang Lee has done. Offered us a second look. In my opinion, “Taking Woodstock” is a marvelously told, sensitive story.

No, it’s probably not for everyone. It portrays psychedelic drug use as a positive, uplifting experience. It portrays alternative lifestyles as an American gift— you know, the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing.

It also reminds us that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Sometimes history’s defining moments need not be atrocities or cataclysms, but simply a bunch of people and a handful of talented musicians making nice together. I have no problem with that.

Just don’t eat the brown acid.