Commune

This movie did a good job of illustrating a particular place and time in American history.

A bunch of hippies beg some money from some Hollywood types, including apparently James Coburn, and go off to Northern California to begin their alternative lifestyle utopia.

The first winter is harsh and tests them. The reality of hard work sets in. The reality of relationships and kids sets in, and yet they try to stick to their principles of free love, no possessions, and anti-establishment living.

It's easy to make fun of these folks now, but as Peter Coyote says, you can't imagine that kind of idealism that people had back then, that they could create a whole new society. They were trying something new and experimental.

It's fun to watch them try, and sometimes fail. The women begin to emerge out of the show of the men and take some control over the ranch. The reality of raising kids with no schools, and without one committed partner often falls by the wayside. The kid rebels by getting a crew cut. Adults rebel by only sleeping with one partner.

It is, as another reviewer pointed out, a portrait of a time when people thought that anything was possible, and tried to create a new society. That they ultimately may not have succeeded is less important than the journey they took.

I am not a hippie, but I have a keen interest in the concepts of the 60s and what works and what doesn't. One of the 60s concepts was the commune, where like minded people could live completely "Free", albeit in a very primitive state. It's almost like a living experiment to discover why modern civilization was invented, as in government, marriage, medicine, agriculture etc. There is a reason why we don't live that way any more, because it sucks! Many of the stories are heart breaking, especially the children who are asked to make very adult decisions at very young ages. As much as these people tried, you cannot escape discipline, responsibility and deligence.

The comments for Commune make it sound like a very interesting film, one that I would be deeply interested in. Unfortunately, the producers didn't see fit to include closed captions for the hearing impaired and deaf. That leaves me and countless others like me, who depend on closed captions to follow a movie, completely out.

This is inexcusable for any film produced in the year 2005. In a world where all manner of handicaps and disabilities are accommodated, it's infuriating and ironic that the ever sanctimonious entertainment industry fails to demand that all productions and movie theaters be closed captioned.

This is the first, and as far as I can tell, the only documentary portrayal of the 1960s counter-culture as it actually existed. It is a sympathetic portrayal, completely devoid of the usual condescension, contempt, and hindsight revisionism.

This is not a film about clothes or rock music. It is a film about people of serious intent who were willing to go the distance and who devoted their lives to one another in a large family of their own making. "Commune" is an important American historical document and must be seen by anyone wishing to understand what on earth was going on in this country during the late 1960s to mid-1970s.

I just watched this documentary and found it to be against what I consider to be right living. Basically, all the people were/are lost. They really hadn't found a thing except the great need for boundaries within all areas of life.

Real freedom MUST be coupled with virtue and it is not virtuous to have intercourse with whomever or to allow one's child to go and do as he/she pleases, even to leave the family for far off lands with strangers.

These people found no absolute truths. They live(d) without accountability to God, refuse(d) His ways --if they knew them at all, were without a moral standard, knew nothing of real love which includes a desire to depart from sin, and entirely void of the concept of eternity.

There is a way that seems right to a man but the end thereof is the way of death. Pleasure that is the broadest doorway into a separation from God.