After watching Laura and Rohan fan-girl over the latest most raved about the Netflix short documentary series Wild, Wild Country (2018), I decided to check it out for myself. It still baffles me that what was once a small cult that was birthed in a small town in India suddenly moved hundreds of its followers to a small country-town in Wasco County, Oregon USA. I must admit the 1 hour or so episodes take a lot of out of you and attempting to binge-watching this series is not encouraged – but props to you if do and can handle it well! The documentary follows the rift between the Wasco County locals and the Rajneeshpuram community through the use of interviews from both parties (beautifully composed), archival footage and re-enactments (that were – once again – beautifully shot) of Wasco County.

Other than being quite aesthetically pleasing and comforting, the structure itself blurs the line between good and evil. What we assume would be presented as the “evil” is the Rajneeshpuram followers, however it somehow presented them as victims or “broken souls” and found their way of being happy. Probably except for Sheela who was clearly consumed by her own ambition and power beyond the religious group but also subtly presented as a victim of Osho’s manipulation.

The locals seemed to be the victims of this idea of the American dream and the large group that had the absolute potential to strip that away from them. At first, they accepted the Rajneeshpuram community into their own, but only realised that their jobs and homes were ultimately going to be abolished if they didn’t resist Sheela’s “cunning ways”.

I’m still in the middle of the 3rd episode but it just feels so surreal that this all unfolded about 30 years ago, the interviewees always have something interesting to share and appear at the most appropriate of times and the found footage just seem so confronting and overwhelming at times that I just sit there and wonder how far I can go with watching this entire series. It’s like I’m between this fine line of curiosity and nope, that’s enough Netflix for the day. At this stage I’m on the curiosity side, but will take about an episode a day or maybe a week to be safe.