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No consensus yet.
All Critics (19) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (18) | Rotten (1) | DVD (1)
Commune channels a bygone era of drop-outs living an American dream on the Free Love frontier. This is the happy alternative to the apocalyptic California sub-cultures of Charles Manson and the Rev. Jim Jones.
Watching Jonathan Berman's affectionate documentary, Commune, about the influential establishment in Siskiyou County, brought to mind the recent documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple.
Commune gets at the central, seductive paradoxes inherent in so much counterculture belief and practice.
Fitfully interesting, but would have benefited from tighter focus and finer detail.
It's good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.
It's fascinating to see how the Black Bears got onto their current path, but we don't see enough of the journey.
Kinda down-to-earth comments make Commune kinda intriguing.
Examines what life was like at an idealized, hippie oasis back in the Sixties. Not exactly groovy, or anybody's idea of nirvana, dude.
An intriguing, entertaining and engaging documentary. My only criticism -- I simply wanted to know so much more.
If not a social history of the '60s, it's a close examination of a quintessential '60s phenomenon that speaks volumes about the attitudes and experiences that shaped the decade.
The documentary is loose-limbed and not at all artful--which is to say, it's scarcely bourgeois and just as the Black Bear Ranch people would like it.
What is fascinating about Berman's Commune is how well it captures the passage of time and the life lessons learned from the commune experience.
[font=Century Gothic]"Commune" is a satisfactory documentary about the Black Bear Ranch which was founded in 1968 by Richard and Elsa Marley as a secluded refuge in Siskiyou County, California where people could reject the competitive nature of society, be themselves and work together in peace. Despite the collective nature of the commune, what was needed here is a single voice to give a straightforward history of the ranch which is apparently still going strong today, thus avoiding being just another cliche of the 1960's. At the same time, there is too much emphasis on the present day activities of the founders(gee, that Peter Coyote guy certainly did well for himself...) who eventually left the commune to return to the outside world. Even though the documentary is not as deep as it could have been, there is testimony on how women contributed to the workforce and the improvised healthcare.("The Business of Being Born" made a better connection between the communes and the rise in natural childbirth.) So, there was definitely more going on here than the grainy amateur footage of liberated people running around naked would attest to.[/font]
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