Commune (Black Bear Ranch Commune)

What do you do when you become convinced that your country is unchangeably repressive and that efforts at reform at best tinker around the edges of it? For thousands of people in the 1960s, the answer was to build alternative communities--"communes," as they were called then, "intentional communities," as they're called today. One of the longest-lasting of these 1960s-era communities, Black Bear Ranch, is explored by director Jonathan Berman in his fascinating "Commune."

Founded in 1968 on 80 secluded acres in northern California, Black Bear is still up and running, although with a different generation of residents. Berman tracks the commune from its early days through the present with generous interviews of some of its founders, many of whom--actor Peter Coyote, Osha Neumann, Herbert Marcuse's stepson--have since "gone respectable."

One of the best features of Berman's film is its balance. Like all communities, Black Bear had its ups and downs--youthful idealism and youthful naivete, sexual freedom and sexual jealousy, tolerant earnestness and dogmatic zealotry--and Berman goes to some pains to make sure that his audience is exposed to both. His interviews with the commune's residents also reveals, without hitting the viewer over the head, that communal living can bring out the best as well as the worst in individual personalities.

One of the more touching interviews in the film was with the dying Richard Marley, co-founder of Black Bear. Marley's transformation during his years at the commune, from a rather authoritarian type to one who gradually learned to embrace "open-heartedness"--is one of the individual success stories from the experiment, and in many ways it symbolizes the general transformation the community went through (one of the most obvious of these is the change of attitude towards women as equal partners).

Black Bear's motto from the very beginning was "Free Land for Free People." There are hazards, of course, when one embraces freedom, but there are also great possibilities. Berman's "Commune" is a testament to both. But it would've been good to hear a bit more than Berman delivers about the nature of the alternative society that Black Bear residents hoped to build--their values, their hopes, their vision.

Commune is a nostalgic look at the Black Bear commune that began in northern California in 1968. The members of the commune raised the money to buy the land by asking the members of various rock groups for money. Now in late middle age, the former Black Bear residents reflect on the happenings at the commune and what it meant to their lives.

There is a lot of human interest in the film and it provides a nice look at a bygone era. The former Black Bear residents comment on the struggles and personality clashes that inevitably arose as they attempted to live on the land. There is lots of film of hairy people running around nude in the woods. The film also includes interviews with some of the commune's mystified neighbors, who, unsurprisingly, still don't seem to understand the hippies.

Unfortunately, Commune leaves a lot of unanswered questions. We see the former Black Bear members living their largely-conventional lives, but we hear very little about why each person decided to leave Black Bear. Commune generally recounts the stories of the Black Bear residents "back in the day" and then "fast forwards" to the present. The intervening parts of their lives are largely missing.

Most viewers probably will disapprove of the decisions that the Black Bear residents made regarding their children. We learn that a "child worshiping" cult named Shiva Lila moved into the commune in the 1970s. Eventually, Shiva Lila was expelled from the commune. When Shiva Lila left, some of the Black Bear children went with them, even though the parents stayed behind. One can see that the kids of the Black Bear hippies still struggle to understand their experiences at the commune.

For those interested in the 1960s, Commune is worth a look.

Here's a story of a real hippie commune in northern California. Full of vintage film showing hairy people cavorting in the wilderness. Nice, if painful, contrasts with the same characters today, looking tired and old, but still spouting the old hippie phraseology. They went back to the land. You should step back in time and watch this documentary.

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