Commune
★★★ 1/2
20th Anniversary Restoration
There’s something magnetic about watching people try to build a new world from scratch. Commune, directed by Jonathan Berman, is a fascinating dive into Black Bear Ranch, a utopian community tucked away in Northern California in the late ’60s. Built on the motto “Free Land for Free People,” Black Bear wasn’t a cult, and that’s made crystal clear. It was more of a chaotic, idealistic, stubborn experiment in collective living—one born from the counterculture's most radical dreams.
What makes the film work isn’t just the historical footage (though it’s extensive and deeply evocative) but the sheer number of former residents the director tracked down. These aren’t distant voiceovers—these are warm, reflective and sometimes brutally honest conversations with people who actually lived it. The first two acts of the film lovingly reconstruct how Black Bear came together, the shared dreams of self-sufficiency, radical politics and free love. But it’s in the final stretch—when the cracks start to show—that Commune really comes alive.
Hearing these former residents discuss the unraveling of their utopia is compelling and, frankly, kind of heartbreaking. Jealousy, burnout, logistics—it’s the real stuff of communal living, and the film doesn’t shy away from it. There's no outsider narrator forcing a political stance. Instead, it trusts the people who lived it to tell the story, and that makes it feel authentic and lived-in.
And sure, as someone who’s spent over a decade in Oklahoma, I found myself eyeing those Oregon forests with a bit of envy. The idea of waking up surrounded by trees, living off the land and trading capitalism for community has a strange appeal—especially in the context of today’s world. But then, there’s also... the nudity. A lot of nudity. And I’ll admit, I don’t think I could swing full-time nudist farming life. But I get the spirit.
Commune isn’t just a time capsule—it’s a kind of historical mirror. In a post-pandemic, politically fractured world, its themes hit differently. Could something like Black Bear happen again today? Would people be willing to give up comfort and individualism for community? Or would it collapse under the same pressures all over again?
The film doesn’t offer easy answers, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a brisk, thoughtful documentary with just enough weirdness to keep it unpredictable. Whether you're nostalgic for the ‘60s or just wondering if there’s another way to live, Commune makes you think—and that’s more than a lot of documentaries can say.
