The Reel Review
This six episode Netflix docu-series details the national media circus that erupted when the Rolls Royce loving, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, a controversial religious guru from India led thousands of his followers to remote northern Oregon in 1981 to form a commune. Escalating tensions, accusations of wild sex orgies, legal challenges, an assassination plot, and the first bioterror attack on U.S. soil, are all described in this saga loaded with archival footage and interviews with key players in the movement. Ma Anand Sheela, the Bhagwan’s still unapologetic right hand woman, tells us how she created a community. Despite a few slow spots and a certain repetitive, monotonous tone after a couple of episodes, filmmakers Chapman and Maclain Way do a great job of telling both sides of the riveting story – quickly alternating between the followers seeking a utopian society, and the put-upon residents who’d lost their previously tranquil lives, all the while raising questions about the Bill of Rights and and what truly is the difference between a religion and a cult.
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