The Way brothers structure this six-part series first as an unlikely love story – between Rajneesh and his devotees – and later, when things take a darker, sinister turn, as a thriller. Then there are the people of Antelope (the documentary focuses on three residents) - relatively calm and quiet, as compared to Sheela and Niren, who recall the days of Rajneeshees with horror and (latent) anger, a time when their pastoral middle-class propriety was severely challenged. Even years later, he retains his persuasive skills as a lawyer, defending Rajneesh, commune, and their decisions at every step. So is Niren, a headstrong lawyer from Seattle who left his world to join Rajneesh’s, first in Pune and later in Oregon. A leader with a petty dictatorial streak, who was known for being haughty and remorseless, Sheela is an arresting presence. Take, for instance, easily the most fascinating character in the piece, Sheela, who, now in her 60s, speaks in an almost hypnotic, musical tone. One also completes the other - they’re friends, foes, foils, each imbuing the documentary with a unique energy and poignancy, a bundle of swirling, scary contradictions.
Each individual in this motley ensemble can stand on their own their triumphs, loss, and realisations are personal. If they were enjoying the sunset, then the Rajneeshees were blinded by the light, an unending beacon of Truth that kept them enchanted and addicted.ĭirected by Maclain Way and Chapman Way, Wild West Country tells its story from three points of view: from the people of Antelope who were first intrigued and, later, baffled and scared by the Rajneeshees and the two sets of Rajneeshees, the ones who remained loyal to Bhagwan (his attorney and Rajneeshpuram’s mayor, Swami Prem Niren (Philip Toelkes) and the ones who broke out (Rajneesh’s fiery personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, and her trusted aide, Ma Shanti B (Jane Stork).
In 1981, before the first batch of strangers arrived in red robes, buying a 64,000-acre ranch and spending $125 million to develop a utopian commune, Oregon’s Antelope wasn’t even a town - it was populated by 40 people anticipating a quiet retirement. The potential for drama here is immense, evoking a famous Leo Tolstoy line, “All great literature is one of the two stories a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”īut there’s a third kind of story too, where a man embarking on a journey becomes a stranger in a town.
And nothing was out of bounds for them – neither immigration fraud nor mass poisoning or attempted murders. Like most successful romances, this relationship too was built on Folie à deux, or the Folly of Two, a psychiatric condition where the delusion of one partner is transmitted to the other.īut there was one key difference – thousands shared that delusion in Rajneeshpuram, a commune established by Rajneesh’s followers in Oregon’s Wasco County in the early ’80s. A new Netflix documentary series, Wild Wild Country, is about a particularly tumultuous affair – one that lasted four years but aspired for permanence – between the spiritual leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, in Oregon. A religion is a marriage a cult is an affair. Scenes from that film, along with three works controlled by Osho International, are shown in Wild Wild Country, according to the complaint.The difference between a religion and a cult is a matter of scale. Hilow directed a 1993 documentary called Rajneeshpuram an Experiment to Provoke God. Osho is described in the complaint as a Swiss company that publishes, licenses and archives the work of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the controversial guru at the center of the Netflix series. The Osho International Foundation and filmmaker Michael Hilow on Thursday sued Netflix, along with Duplass Brothers Productions and directors Chapman Way and Maclain Way, claiming the docuseries used a substantial amount of their footage without consent. Netflix has been hit with a copyright infringement over its cult hit docuseries Wild Wild Country.
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