By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Jodi Whillle | Maria Demopoulos
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 98
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2245223/combined
Chris says: “A popular health food restaurant on the Sunset Strip… an experiment in spiritual communal living at the dawn of the 1970s… a cult overseen by Father Yod, a charismatic, excessively-bearded ex-Marine who eventually proclaimed he was God Himself… a psychedelic rock band fronted by Father Yod on bass drum… The Source Family was all of those things (and more). This doc is essentially an adaptation of a 2007 book about the group written by two of its members and it consists almost entirely of archival still photos (plus the scant existing filmed footage) and modern day interviews with many of the family’s prominent members. Yod (nee Jim Baker), whose death in 1975 was the catalyst for the group’s disintegration shortly thereafter, remains a curious enigma: he’s nearly Charlie Manson without the murder, and perhaps only half as crazy. The degree to which these former (and in some cases, perpetual) hippies have changed in the decades since varies wildly, but it only
begins to explain what sort of impact the whole experience had on them. Normally, when filmmakers let the footage speak for itself without any editorializing, the results are pure and potentially enlightening. Without much outside perspective, however, the legacy painted here is often too insular to effectively resonate. 3 cats”