First of all, this is an intriguing, entertaining and engaging documentary. I certainly enjoyed it. It integrates interviews with the now-much-older residents of the Bare Creek Commune with images (looked like old video) of the Commune in all its bare natural glory.
Truly, I was expecting a program that revealed the founders as those with trumped up utopian dreams that eventually crumbled into a million pieces of reality. But, even in retrospect the participants seemed to nearly only looked back nostalgically on their experience. They were all rather intellectual, introspective souls. Of course, there were times that presented big challenges to their ideals, but nothing shatteringly so. Save for, and only maybe, the tale of a commune kid who was shuffled off to live with a group of kids in India and other places around the world before returning to California and her birth parents. Her story is fascinating.
Another commune kid speaks about his experience, as well. But these commune kid stories only scratch the surface. I wanted to know so much more.
In fact, that is my only criticism -- I simply wanted to know so much more. What were the thoughts of the other children? What about loafers and freeloaders? I'd always thought communes would ultimately fail because only a small percentage of the participants would end up doing all of the work, while the majority freeloaded. But, this aspect is almost not mentioned in the documentary.
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