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10/18/07
Commune (2006)
95 %
Reviews Counted: 19 Fresh: 18 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 7.5/10
Runtime: 78 mins
Synopsis: During the radical fervor of the early 1970s, utopian communities dotted the American landscape. They aimed to reshape the world with "free love" and common property, and they excited controversy and fear amongst local residents across the country. Though the idea of communes is now often... [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Starring: Peter Coyote
Director: Jonathan Berman
Reviews
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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.
02/23/07
Top Critic
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.
02/23/07
Commune gets at the central, seductive paradoxes inherent in so much counterculture belief and practice.
02/22/07
Examines what life was like at an idealized, hippie oasis back in the Sixties. Not exactly groovy, or anybody's idea of nirvana, dude.
12/28/06
An intriguing, entertaining and engaging documentary. My only criticism -- I simply wanted to know so much more.
11/15/06
Fitfully interesting, but would have benefited from tighter focus and finer detail.
11/09/06
Top Critic
It's good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.
11/09/06
It's fascinating to see how the Black Bears got onto their current path, but we don't see enough of the journey.
11/03/06
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.
11/03/06
Berman blends home movies of ranch life with interviews with former residents, their now-grown children and neighbors of the ranch.
11/03/06
Jonathan Berman's documentary about California's famous Black Bear Ranch is a trip.
11/03/06
Commune, a breezy, informal history of a long-running California commune begun in the summer of 1968 and still in existence, offers the fascinating spectacle of observing people then and now.
11/02/06
Top Critic
Berman captures a way of life that has been curiously influential -- has been imitated, ripped off, ridiculed and demonized -- ever since.
11/02/06
Celebrating the desire to immerse oneself in a collective, world-changing enterprise, Commune is unavoidably nostalgic.
10/31/06
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.
10/19/06
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.
05/06/06
A keen vet docu-maker's eye and a chronicler's compassion lends pic real resonance.
05/05/06
Top Critic
In its own quiet, revealing fashion, Berman's film explores the folly and faith that characterized much of Black Bear's early existence.
05/05/06
1 - 20 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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