Our new favourite …
Boxset
What’s it called?
Wild Wild Country
What’s it about?
Controversial guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who founded an ashram in his native India and then moved it lock, stock and extensive Rolls Royce collection to Oregon, in America’s Pacific north-west, in 1981. Needless to say the locals were none too pleased to have (as they saw it) hundreds of orange-clad hippies turning up. Nor were they exactly delighted when they heard about the commune’s plans to build Rajneeshpuram, a city intended for 10,000 people (presumably also orange-clad hippies). The documentary, a hit at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, examines what happened next.
Who’s in it?
The Bhagwan, also known as Osho, died in 1990 so he only features in archive footage, though there’s plenty of it. Instead sibling film-makers Maclain and Chapman Way tracked down Osho’s second in command, known as Ma Anand Sheela (among other things), and it’s her rather unreliable re-telling of the story which dominates. And what a story it is – by the time the ashram was finally wound up in the late 1980s even the FBI had become involved amid allegations of extensive criminal activity. Take your pick from: attempted murder, arson, wiretapping, immigration fraud, vote rigging and poisonings. You really couldn’t make it up.
Where can I find it?
It’s available on Netflix.
Fun fact …
So convinced were they of their cause that the citizens of Rajneeshpuram built their own airport. It still exists, though it has been renamed Big Muddy Ranch Airport. Oh, and Osho’s collection of gaudily-decorated Rolls Royce cars eventually numbered 93.
For fans of ...
Cults, Indian mystics, bad 1980s fashions.
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