Review: 'Back to the Garden' revisits the '60s
http://www.oregonlive.com/movies/index.ssf/2009/12/review_back_to_the_garden_revi.html
By Marc Mohan
December 03, 2009
It was in the mid-1980s that America seemed to become fascinated all
over again with the '60s. Two decades after Flower Power, the "Greed
is Good" era looked back with a mixture of envy, admiration, regret
and embarrassment. Of course, even during Ronald Reagan's second
presidential term, there still existed bands of individuals living
off the land, pursuing ideals of simplicity and peace. Seattle
filmmaker Kevin Tomlinson sought out one such community in eastern
Washington in 1988, but the footage he shot sat on his shelf for 20 years.
So now we have "Back to the Garden," a where-are-they-now documentary
that tracks down these hippies, now 40 years removed from their
subculture's peak -- or at least the peak of their subculture's
stereotype. None of the several counterculturalists Tomlinson
interviews have sold out to Goldman Sachs (though one works at
Microsoft), and they all seem to have retained their idealism. Most,
though, also have retained some of the less attractive aspects of
hippiedom -- a weakness for New Age-style cults and occasional lapses
into passive-aggressive narcissism, for instance.
Still, the project as a whole is a welcome reminder that things like
hope and consciousness don't have to be passing fads.
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