The Workshop

The Workshop is a glimpse into the nudity laden 10 day sex and zen workshop that will help you find your way in life. Well, that's the idea anyways.

The flick is a total mixed bag of thought. One second, I was digging what was going on, as I think the aspect of nudity can definitely work...but only for so long. Hell, I think I would enjoy going to this workshop, getting naked, sleeping in a tent, having sex and orgies, talking about aliens...but at the same time I've seen the people, and the characters, and I don't think I'd be able to deal with it.

At first I saw vulnerability, and an innocent openness....and then, I saw a facade. You're there for 10 days, and of course you're trying to be as positive and open as you can...but the way a lot of these people talk, and embrace this philosophy so whole-heartedly is beyond melodramatic and rather fake. One of the people there (who I identified with most) tried asking another member a question, if she had sex with so-and-so, but was met with something like this, 'I will answer your question when space allows it.' That is not the exact sentence, but it's very similar, and all I need to make my point.

The camp is without a doubt a hell of a unique experience. But it also appears to be hit or miss and untrustworthy with it's success rate. Out of half dozen or so main people on display here, I'm still uncertain if any of them truly got something out of it. Just because you act and look like some spiritual/new-wave thinker...it doesn't make you one. But they wouldn't know that.

Hippy nudist alien guru camp documentary. Very interesting and entertaining. Especially the basic theme of common emotions of guilt and jealousy everyone struggles with. Far from being cult like as one would expect, it's seems more like a innocent exercise of emotional exploration and experimentation. The music and editing work is also surprisingly good.

I ran into this documentary intrigued by its synopsis and not knowing what to expect which is how i think the people in the workshop approached the experience. Would have liked to hear more on the alien theme though.

Enlightenment guaranteed, clothing optional.

Guys, you must understand that it is unlikely the women will be as eager and open about sex as is shown in this movie. This movie is intended to promote a an openness and acceptance of sex that is less realistic in real life.

The leader insists that we must not allow others to control us and his instance is an attempt to control us. He is promoting promiscuity, which I am not criticizing but the philosophy really dwells on things like that. The thing that is unrealistic about this movie is that in real life there would be a huge imbalance of much more men interested in this type of thing.

There are people of all ages in this workshop and for the show they showed the young people nearly exclusively.

There is a little sex. A woman massages a man's penis for at least half a minute and it is very graphic.

I watched this a few years ago and wonder what the participants think now a number of years later, has their choices been influenced by the participation in the workshop changed what they do and how they behave now?

As others have said some of the assertions from the Guru are questionable but I am more interested in the people who participated and the longer term impact on them. Do they follow a more hedonistic lifestyle now or maybe it made them a bit more Conservative as they look back on the experience?

I know i would have valued being open to ideas like this in my younger years but don't think it will have changed the decisions I have made.

I saw this film some years ago but it is stuck in my head long enough that I looked it up over a decade and a half later. It seems that most other reviewers spend most of their reviews criticizing the ideas in the film and especially the ideas of the guru. A pragmatic approach would be to talk about the documentary itself. If one wants to talk about the subject matter, then recognize that we all grew up inheriting much of our values instead of interrogating the world and possibilities and then consciously deciding what made sense to us. Most of us have strayed less far from our ideas of romantic relationships than we have from our parent's political choices (i.e. Not much).

It may have been nice to see and hear more from more of the participants. It may be that some of the participants didn't want to be interviewed in depth even if they were in the background. It may have been the documentarian hung out more with some people than others and they included people who are more of their own experience. It may have been that they thought some people would look better. I don't know why they chose them and I don't think any of us do so I won't criticize that decision.

Years after this I read Christopher Ryan's book, Sex at Dawn, and it brings up some ideas in these directions. The assumption that some other reviewers note that women probably wouldn't like this way of being is a sexist view of women. Do they think that women don't like sex? Do they know that women in the US in some studies I saw have been at least as likely to cheat in a relationship than the man? Would a woman wanting sex as much or more than a man feel dangerous to a man? Perhaps.

I'm glad this film exists. Any film that provides only comfort food to our ideologies and does not challenge them, I would say worth making. Thanks to this film and others for presenting challenging ideas to me and others.