Find Movies & TV
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover
Explore
Movies & TV Shows
Most Popular
Leaving Soon
Categories
Action
Animation
Comedy
Crime
Documentary
Drama
En Español
Horror
Music
Romance
Sci-Fi
Thriller
Western
Explore
Browse Channels
Featured Channels
Crime 360
Nashville
FailArmy
Categories
Hit TV
Drama TV
Movies
True Crime
News
Sports
Reality
Classics
Sci-Fi & Action
Chills & Thrills
Comedy
Game Shows
Nature & Travel
History & Science
Food & Home
Lifestyle
Kids & Family
En Español
International
Anime+
Music
Sign In
Commune
Directed by
Jonathan Berman
Not Rated
2005
78m
Documentary
6.6
96%
47%
5.6
Add to Watchlist
A documentary on the Black Bear Ranch Commune, an alternative living community founded in 1968 in the remote North Californian wilderness.
More
Where to Watch Commune
Cineverse
Free
Fandor
Subscription
Fandor Amazon Channel
Subscription
Cast of Commune
Peter Coyote
self, Black Bear resident
Jonathan Berman
Director / Writer / Producer
Christian Ettinger
Co-Producer
Brian Keith Tanz
Co-Producer
Elliott Sharp
Music
Commune Ratings & Reviews
reDocumented
Glenn Dunks
You can likely never quite escape human emotions and public perceptions. Like when commune buddies become lovers who become partners. Like when the police raid your land and seize marijuana only for it to actually be a tomato plant.
48 Hills
Dennis Harvey
With plenty of archival footage, and interviews with current and former members including Peter Coyote, Commune underlines that 1960s idealism didn't die out for everybody.
Chicago Sun-Times
Bill Stamets
Commune channels a bygone era of drop-outs living an American dream on the Free Love frontier. This is the happy alternative to the apocalyptic California sub-cultures of Charles Manson and the Rev. Jim Jones.
San Francisco Chronicle
G. Allen Johnson
Watching Jonathan Berman's affectionate documentary, Commune, about the influential establishment in Siskiyou County, brought to mind the recent documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple.
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Commune gets at the central, seductive paradoxes inherent in so much counterculture belief and practice.
Upstage Magazine
Kam Williams
Examines what life was like at an idealized, hippie oasis back in the Sixties. Not exactly groovy, or anybody's idea of nirvana, dude.
Hollywood Report Card
Ross Anthony
An intriguing, entertaining and engaging documentary. My only criticism -- I simply wanted to know so much more.
Los Angeles Times
Michael Ordoña
Fitfully interesting, but would have benefited from tighter focus and finer detail.
L.A. Weekly
F.X. Feeney
It's good to hear people talking about openheartedness without irony.
AV Club
Noel Murray
It's fascinating to see how the Black Bears got onto their current path, but we don't see enough of the journey.
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
If not a social history of the '60s, it's a close examination of a quintessential '60s phenomenon that speaks volumes about the attitudes and experiences that shaped the decade.
New York Post
V.A. Musetto
Berman blends home movies of ranch life with interviews with former residents, their now-grown children and neighbors of the ranch.
New York Daily News
Jack Mathews
Jonathan Berman's documentary about California's famous Black Bear Ranch is a trip.
New York Times
Stephen Holden
Commune, a breezy, informal history of a long-running California commune begun in the summer of 1968 and still in existence, offers the fascinating spectacle of observing people then and now.
Salon.com
Andrew O'Hehir
Berman captures a way of life that has been curiously influential -- has been imitated, ripped off, ridiculed and demonized -- ever since.
Village Voice
J. Hoberman
Celebrating the desire to immerse oneself in a collective, world-changing enterprise, Commune is unavoidably nostalgic.
Slant Magazine
Ed Gonzalez
The documentary is loose-limbed and not at all artful--which is to say, it's scarcely bourgeois and just as the Black Bear Ranch people would like it.
Entertainment Insiders
Jonathan W. Hickman
What is fascinating about Berman's Commune is how well it captures the passage of time and the life lessons learned from the commune experience.
Variety
Robert Koehler
A keen vet docu-maker's eye and a chronicler's compassion lends pic real resonance.
Seattle Times
Jeff Shannon
In its own quiet, revealing fashion, Berman's film explores the folly and faith that characterized much of Black Bear's early existence.
Take Plex everywhere
Watch free anytime, anywhere, on almost any device.
See the full list of supported devices
Home
Live TV
On Demand
Discover