Review of Wild Wild Country

I can see this story from multiple angles. I grew up 30 miles from the site of the main story, and I know the people well. I was also a classic 60s hippie who lived in comunes which were despised by the locals. One thing I saw first hand which was given remarkably little attention was the was the way that some "spiritual" personality centered communes/cults were essentially ponzi schemes that bled money from rich and powerful yet disaffected members of the privileged class. The cult in this documentary fits that model perfectly. It's remarkable how the filmmakers ignored the core nature of the cult in order to fit a clichéd story arc of the supposed rise of a pure and innocent spiritual movement and ultimate downfall due to supposedly closed minded and hypocritical townsfolk and a few ruthless individuals driven by devotion to the cult. Sorry, but that's not the reality. The Rajneeshees were essentially a criminal enterprise from the beginning in India, accruing wealth through a web of financial crimes. That's the entire reason they fled to America. Yet there is barely a mention, because that would destroy the "pure beginning" the filmmakers wanted to build a tragedy from. Also going with zero notice was the fact that this was a classic case of class conflict. The locals were presented as some kind of entrenched power structure oppressing the poor cultists. That stands truth on its head. The locals were the modern rural poor, at the bottom of the economic ladder. The cultists were wealthy beyond the dreams of any locals, having gotten rich in the world of high finance, corporate law, etc. They thought they could move in and crush the local population through a combination economic power and crude bullying and intimidation. Imagine for a second that instead of moving into a poor white town, they had moved into a town of equally poor black or Hispanic residents. Sympathies are a little different, yes? There is at least one, still-underplayed, element of the story that shows the true colors of the cultists. That element is the cynical manipulation and ultimate betrayal of the homeless people brought in as cheap manual labor for the privileged elite of the cult, and as ballot box stuffers. Once that plan failed, the street people were heartlessly abandoned. All in all, the filmmakers failed by ignoring cold reality to fit a fairy tale narrative.