I borrowed this movie from Netflix for two reasons. The first and most honest reason was that I’ve always been curious about communes. I was a San Francisco Bay Area teenager in the sixties and identified with hippies and flower children. But by the time I moved to the Haight Ashbury in the early seventies, most hippies had moved on - many of them, to communes. However my life path did not take me to a rural commune so I missed the social experiment aspects of that movement, and I wanted to learn more.

My second reason for watching this movie was for novel research. Back in 2003 when this film was made, I wrote a novel that included some commune scenes. In the process of revising this novel (which has never yet been done) I’ll need more information about what it was really like to live on a commune… so I thought, “Cool! A movie about a commune! I MUST watch it!” … [The commune in my novel, Far Out - The Journey To Oblivion... is not Black Bear Ranch; it is a fictional commune in Southern Oregon.]

W.O.W. …I got more than I expected. The first shock was seeing scenery of the Klamath River Valley and western Siskiyou County - because that’s where I live. I reside near Happy Camp, California. The commune in this movie, Black Bear Ranch, is about fifty miles downriver from where I live. The second shock was that I saw someone who I met last year… at the time I was working in the local pizza restaurant and this person came in to buy… pizza, I guess. Okay, so it is a small world!!

The commune’s motto is “Free Land For Free People” and it still exists today - on the original eighty acres near Somes Bar, California. Since I watched the movie I realized I’ve known people who were living or visiting there. It is definitely cool that there’s a place for people to go live, if they want to take part in that kind of free community… if they like living in the woods, doing communal farming/logging/cooking… whatever it takes to keep the place operational. The commune website: Black Bear Ranch.

The movie starts with film of the social unrest in the sixties, then weaves in interviews with founding members including actor Peter Coyote, artist Elsa Marley, and herbalist Dr. Michael Tierra. There’s plenty of film from the early commune days mixed in with the much more recent interviews, and we get to follow the stories of several founding members from their original commune days to the present in which they reminisce about their experience, considering both the positive aspects as well as the negative, which included a lot of jealousy due to the free-love aspect of commune life.

I would not want to live in those conditions. I see it as an arena for social experimentation and self-expression, especially for youth seeking peaceful and loving alternatives to the crazy civilization we now live in. I found it strange that the topic of drug use was absent in this movie except for a brief anecdote about a drug raid yielding tomato plants that the deputies mistook for marijuana. Another negative factor was a second group called Shiva Lila, a child-worship cult, that took up residence on Black Bear Ranch. When they were forced to leave, they took commune children with them to southeast Asia where half of the children they had with them died. An interview with one of the survivors showed how strange and difficult a childhood it was. Her’s was a fortunate outcome as she returned to California and reunited with her father.

At the website for the movie, Commune, you can watch the trailer, link to the movie’s MySpace page, and download a study guide that includes related links.

I’m totally into learning about gurus these days. I created a Squidoo page called Gurus Online and added gurus and a big photo of Paramahansa Yogananda to my MySpace page. I even wrote a bit about Paramahansa Yogananda on my blog, Geniyyah Healing. So when I came across YouTube videos of Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, also known as Amma, the hugging saint, I was intrigued and wanted to see her full-length movie, Darshan: The Embrace.

Oh my goodness. This movie is so artfully done, it is a feast for the eyes and hearts of those who yearn for a glimpse into the interior workings of a spiritual ashram, and who desire a taste of what it means to be in India. Besides the views of Amma with her big happy smiles, and her devotees circling around her, the scenery of India was the best part of this movie. The cinematographer did an outstanding job.

Everything about Darshan: The Embrace is pure art. There’s no other way to describe it. This is not a run of the mill movie. It is for people who love viewing the inner heart of an ancient country and culture. It is sure to appeal even to people who aren’t into gurus the way I am.

Amma gets a tremendous amount of devotion from her devotees. It looks like she’s the humble recipient of a constant stream of good chi. She’s also willing to literally dish it out by serving food to whoever needs it. She arranged to have a dinner once weekly, and also a darshan session once weekly. Her darshan is remarkable because she lovingly takes her devotees into her arms and hugs and kisses them. This is beautiful to watch, but the awe-inspiring thing is in knowing that she can sit for many hours, all day long and then some, hugging whoever comes by in her darshan line. Her popularity has grown so much that her darshans require a huge effort. No wonder she cut down from twice weekly to once weekly! She really is a remarkable woman with a huge heart full of love to share.

Darshan: The Embrace is highly recommended for cinematography, or spirituality, or both.

Here’s a CNN report about Amma:

A few books by or about Amma:

I drive a junker, and it is all I can afford at this time in my life. I would love to have a better vehicle. So when I watched this movie about beautiful, attractive electric cars being demolished by an automobile manufacturer, I was bug-eyed to be sure. There were hundreds of cars that looked about a thousand times better than what I’m driving, being crushed and demolished. This is heart shattering stuff.

The devotion of the prior owners of these vehicles touched my soul. They were mostly Southern Californians who tried to do their part to improve the environment by driving electric cars instead of gas guzzlers. One of the former employees of the Saturn EV1 leasing program, Chelsea Sexton, was featured throughout the video. She lost her job when the car manufacturer shut the program down and now is a spokesperson for electric cars. She’s gone from car promotion to politics, and is meeting brick walls everywhere. Car manufacturers and (who else?) gasoline producers are apparently conspiring to keep Americans from being able to drive electric cars.

Too bad, because gas isn’t great for air quality, and electric cars are much cheaper to drive. All those cute little electric cars went to their graves in an untimely, cruel way. This video starts with a funeral for electric cars. How appropriate!

This movie is available through Netflix.