American Commune

Bumped into this doc in a random way, decided to give it a try and was captivated.

Amazing original footage, great editing, love the narration, the details and the fact that they stay focused on the concept: the rise and fall of the "Farm" is presented, but what stays on the foreground is the sisters' story.

The story of 2 sisters who go back to their childhood "hometown" to make peace with the past is nothing new, but what makes the difference is that their hometown is a hippy utopia commune based on a farm. If you are into that era you should watch it just for the original footage that is so candid and unfiltered... no social media at that time so people were being themselves while being filmed, not acting in a way to feed the algorithm.

Love the interviews: convincing the sister's parents, past members of the commune, the commune leader to talk on camera is fantastic and what elevates this doc to a higher level than most other productions.

Conflicts abound and it's what kept me interested. Hippies and "modern society", husband and wife, parents and children, commune members and the Federal Government, commune members and the commune leadership.

No spoilers but: it is smartly edited. Questions arise in a natural way, which is what keeps me watching to get an answer. Good balance of exposition and "show dont tell: the sisters recalling their past and watching the trajectory of what happened.

Great production!

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some takeaways about the utopian commune lifestyle:

• sacrificing personal well-being (and your family's harmony) for a "greater good" leads to burnout.

Having no privacy, no private property, no money, limited personal decision making is not healthy.

• open door policy is a recipe for disaster: without vetting and assigning roles to people who want to join the "club" you'll attract unstable people who just want to take without giving. They will make the environment toxic. The Amish could teach them a thing or two.

• Hierarchy and a system to keep those in power in check are needed. When you have large number of people leadership plays a critical role but its ability to make decisions must be contained. Not only power can lead to those "ego trips" they were preaching about but you can make fatal mistakes and ruin many people lives. (e.g. In the doc: going to guatemala, having ambulance in NYC)

I had friends who lived at The Farm, and I wanted to go there myself back in the 70s, but never could, for various reasons. This documentary confirmed what I already knew; TheFarm created a highly functional community. They had infrastructure (they were totally self-sufficient at one point). They had moral codes. They had a functional economy. They had a spiritual life. It was true social utopia, and I suspect the reason it fell into a capitalist model is because the young people left. Beautiful film. I've always wondered what happened to the kids who were born there.

My parents were hippies living in New Hampshire when the Farm thrived in Tennessee. Members of the Farm community lived with us for a time at our own little farm up north. No, we were not affiliated with Gaskin's farm, but my folks had great admiration the Farm's ideas.

In one scene, the Gaskin's daughter recalls how she once found a gum wrapper and savored its scent for a week.

Welcome to being a hippie kid. I saw in the film how the Farm children loved the freedom of frolicking in the fields and woods. I saw the intimacy, the love, and the hope.

Yet, Ms. Gaskin's story of the gum wrapper, and the comments about the children removing the guns from their Stars Wars action figures, struck a familiar chord.

We were hippie children, but we were still children. The more the grownups sowed us with dogma against plastic toys, sugary junk foods, and the evils of television, the more we jonesed for these things.

We wanted to do the things other kids got to do. When the other kids were still in their pajamas, watching Saturday Morning Cartoons, and eating Capn' Crunch, I had to go stack wood. Never mind how it's ten degrees Fahrenheit.

In contrast to the Cheech & Chong image in which the pop culture likes to portray hippies, intellectuals such as Stephen Gaskin, and my Dad, had different ideas when it came to children.

Mr. Gaskin declared post-war suburban kids were "paddy-asses" raised on Dr. Spock and phony bourgeois values. He thought children were better off raised like pioneer kids: Bare essentials, vigorous work, vigorous play, and a sound spanking for bad behavior. Dad agreed wholeheartedly when our barn-dwelling Gaskinites shared this bit of wisdom.

American Commune presents home movies on the Farm. You see the homespun clothes, the live folk music, and the dining tables rich with a bounty of vegan muck. It probably appeals to you far more than it does to me. I think to myself, "Yeesh, not all this BS again!"

Marijuana and psychedelics brought Mr. Gaskin a great many insights about human behavior and community. However, you notice he based much of his applied philosophy on Biblical principles. Why? Because they work.

There were thousands of communes based on hedonism and a pastiche of philosophies and mysticism designed to rationalize hedonism. Hollywood spoofs these communes to this day because they failed spectacularly.

Nope, to make a community work, you gotta have discipline and work ethic. Mr. Gaskin understood this. He inculcated these principles into his extended family. At its best, that's what the Farm was.

The other pitfall the Gaskins avoided was messianic cultism. The most horrible examples of messiah complex are Rev. Jim Jones and Charles Manson.

Mr. Gaskin allowed people to come and go as they pleased. If people didn't dig they way they did things on the Farm, they were free to go and seek the life they wanted.

Ina May Gaskin's midwifery techniques continue to help people with natural childbirth today. The Gaskins also pioneered the use of soybeans for nutrition. As the documentary shows, the Farm practiced what they preached. I don't know if anyone can verify the quotation, but my Dad said Stephen said, "Don't take over the government, take over the government's job." Whether Mr. Gaskin said this or not, it is a good summation of the Farm policy. They fed the hungry and treated the sick both at home and abroad.

The truth is, self-sufficiency apart from capitalism makes capitalists feel threatened. Hence, the FBI spying, the shock-and-awe pot raid, and the banks bullying the Farm. I shall refrain from spoilers.

As a veteran of a hippie childhood, I wish the documentary had expanded on more of the interpersonal problems that arise from experimental living conditions.

Mr. Gaskin's beliefs were lofty as sermons to his followers. They were difficult when applied. Such as the jealousy and fighting that emerged from polygamous partnering. Such as members having to petition the collective for a toothbrush, while Mr. Gaskin and company purchased high-tech gadgets and spent all kinds of money of relief missions.

Experimental living, no matter how well-intentioned, is often less than salubrious for children.

I grew to despise hippie culture in my youth because I saw so many grownups bickering about how things are supposed to be. I saw so much confusion among the adults. The point I wanted to see the documentary drive home is that folks is folks. As the community grew, it faced the same pitfalls as the established community of squares! I saw the same thing happen in our own hippie community, and I wished they would stop railing against the establishment because the hippies were making the same mistakes.

Well, perhaps I need to make my own documentary!

I recommend "American Commune," but sometimes the story of the vegan Farm doesn't get to the meat of the matter.

This is a privileged view inside an oft-critiqued but little studied historical movement, the "60s commune". (Most of which actually happened in the 70s, but "60s" is shorthand for hippy counterculture. Most of which also happened in the 70s.)

The angle is unique: two children of America's largest and most successful commune return to the scene of the crime as adults to revisit their early years, reconnect with happy memories, and make peace with some of the resentment they still feel about their unorthodox childhood. This is a rare, balanced treatment of the subject, from the perspective of younger participants not caught up in the ideology of their parents' generation, but who took the same wild ride all the same.

That alone makes this a valuable document. Most of what's available about communes was either produced by Baby Boomers on a nostalgia (or vengeance) kick, or by academics who take a cool, remote stance. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get real authority on the subject, both factual and emotional, from filmmakers who are simultaneously insiders and outsiders.

I'm from that era -- not a Baby Boomer, but a member of the next generation (X). I knew both the Boomers in their still-hip phase, and the criticism of them from my parent's 50s generation and the culture at large. (A view I somewhat held myself, at the time.) I was a teenager during the heyday of the commune, and had school friends who lived in communal circumstances. Much of what I saw in this movie reminded me of what I experienced of their home lives, positive and negative.

Now that I'm old I've become an armchair scholar of the commune movement, inspired partly by those memories of my youth, and never pass up source material on it. American Commune is the best commune doc I've seen. Given its unique origins, it's unlikely to be excelled.

There's enough original footage and recent commentary that you, the viewer, can draw your own conclusions about the Grand Experiment formally known as The Farm. It's all there. The Farm has always been known for it's blunt honesty, and the film is certainly honest enough (and unbiased enough) for the viewer to draw her own conclusions.

My mind focused mainly on the history and the economics of The Farm. And that part of the movie was fleshed out in enough detail to provide plenty of food for thought.

But how the movie spoke to my heart is more difficult to put into words. I visited The Farm when I was young, and it was indeed like visiting a foreign country. In fact, I've never visited a foreign country that seemed anywhere near as different as visiting The Farm did.

When my heart quietly reflects on the movie, I see the beauty of the land. The children walk to school through the forest, and are perfectly safe in doing so. In fact, they're perfectly safe, no matter where they go and what they do. How different from America!

Just looking at the people's faces as they're talking taught me so much. By comparison to the faces of most Americans, they're alive with emotion. They haven't had an upbringing which has beaten them down or broken them, or drained the life out of them.

Their upbringing was both impoverished and strict. The strict rules are well-intentioned, and generally derived from hippie culture. Because it was so strict, I was asking myself, "Was this a cult?" And I'd say no. Even though Stephen Gaskin was unquestionably the leader of The Farm, he was a very benign dictator. Not always right, but always concerned for what was best for the community, rather than what was best for himself.