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Wild Wild Country
2018 documentary series From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Wild Wild Country is a Netflix documentary series about the controversial Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), his one-time personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela, and their community of followers in the Rajneeshpuram community located in Wasco County, Oregon, US.[1][2][3] It was released on Netflix on March 16, 2018, after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.[3][4][5][6] The title of the series is drawn from the Bill Callahan song "Drover", which features prominently in the final episode, and it also echoes the comments of Jane Stork ("Ma Shanti Bhadra") about first seeing the ranch, shown at the beginning of episode 2: "it was just so wild, so rugged, but vast—really wild country". The series received positive reviews from critics and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
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Episodes
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Reception
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Critical reception
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes surveyed 46 critical responses and judged 98% of them to be positive, with an average rating of 8.1 out of 10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Wild Wild Country succeeds as an intriguing examination of a forgotten piece of American history that must be seen to be believed."[7] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 79 out of 100, based on 8 critics, indicating generally favorable reviews.[8]
Sam Wollaston of The Guardian praised Wild Wild Country, giving it a 5 out of 5, stating that "It doesn’t matter how well you know the Rajneeshpuram story – you won’t have seen or heard it told as thoroughly as this".[9] Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com wrote "by handling this story so intelligently and by opening its heart to a very complicated idea of good and evil, Wild Wild Country has a profound, mesmerizing power itself".[10] Robert Lloyd of Los Angeles Times asserts that "The greater point of the series is its storytelling and wonderful variety of human self-representation, a useful reminder that no two people have the same story to tell. Every speaker is respectfully presented and allowed to speak their piece, and every one is well spoken; rancher or Rajneeshee, government lawyer or commune attorney, each can seem reasonable in turn".[11]
An article published in The New Republic by Win McCormack, a local Oregon activist, criticized Wild Wild Country for leaving out critical information regarding the activities of the Rajneesh followers, particularly regarding sexual assault of women and children as well as possible intent to unleash an AIDS epidemic.[12] McCormack further argued that, "where the filmmakers have fallen down on the job is in the area of interpretation. They have not addressed squarely some of the more important issues raised by their film, and have left others out completely. The latter category includes a few of the cult’s most odious practices, as well as the true extent of the threat it posed not only to its immediate neighbors in Oregon, but to the entire world."[12]
Osho International Foundation's reaction
The Osho International Foundation, which co-administers Rajneesh's estate and operates the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India, responded to the docuseries on their website Osho Times, saying that "Unfortunately, the docuseries fails to explore key aspects and so does not give a clear account of the real story behind the story", and arguing that the events in Oregon were part of "a U.S. government conspiracy, from the White House on down, aimed at thwarting Osho’s vision of a community based on conscious living."[13]
Accolades
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Soundtrack
The show's score album was released on September 21, 2018, via Western Vinyl Records.[21] The soundtrack was composed by Brocker Way.[22][23] Apart from the score, numerous pre-released songs were also used throughout the series.[24]
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Oregon Experience from PBS and the Oregon Historical Society began its seventh season with a documentary about the community that aired in November 2012.[26]
In January 2019, Priyanka Chopra announced that she will be starring as Ma Anand Sheela in an Amazon Studios feature film adaptation of Wild Wild Country. Titled Sheela, the drama film was written by Nick Yarborough and will be directed by Barry Levinson.[27][28]
In November 2019, Netflix announced a documentary titled Searching for Sheela, which follows Osho's former top aide on her first journey home to India in more than 30 years. The documentary aims to give insight into Sheela's involvement and later prosecution for the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in Oregon. The documentary premiered on Netflix on April 22, 2021.[29][30]
In October 2024, ITV1 aired Children of the Cult,[31][32] a documentary film by Maroesja Perizonius, who grew up in a Rajneesh commune, that investigates allegations of the sexual abuse of children in communities established by Rajneesh.[33] Reportedly, some of the survivors of the alleged abuse were disappointed that Wild Wild Country neglected to include these experiences of former members who were children during their time with the Rajneesh movement.[34]
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References
External links
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