In Vietnam, there was a saying, probably apocryphal, but to this effect: We had to destroy the village to save it. The concluding episodes of the Duplass brothers documentary, Wild Wild Country, demonstrates this proposition in spades. A cult led by a charismatic guru migrates from India and establishes an ashram in an exceedingly remote wasteland in central Oregon. A series of confrontations ensues with the local people not used to the influx of well-educated, prosperous, and sexually promiscuous apostles. Led by the guru's secretary, the police force at the ashram plots to murder prominent State and local officials and, then, engages in mass bio-terrorism, poisoning 750 people in the county seat by mounting a salmonella attack on local salad bars. Wealthy people from Hollywood, including the wife of the producer of The Godfather, swarm to the defense of the guru. Conspicuously venal, the guru follows the money, favoring his new Hollywood disciples. This leads to a schism in the community and the ouster of the guru's secretary (as well as her lieutenants) -- they flee of Germany in advance of a wave of criminal indictments. The State, then, seizes the admissions by the guru that his secretary, the nefarious Ma Nanda Sheela, committed various felonies to serve search warrants on the commune and seize its records. These searches yield evidence of criminal conduct in which the guru, the Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh, was allegedly complicit. The local authorities prepare summons for the arrest of the Bhagwan while the several thousand disciples in the Ashram arm themselves for an apocalyptic confrontation. On the eve of what seems an approaching Armageddon, the Bhagwan flees in a Lear jet. The authorities intercept him and, for all intents and purposes, torture him for about three weeks -- dragging him back to Oregon by a circuitous tour of various penitentiaries and federal prisons (where he is houses with bad hombres). Back in Oregon, the authorities concede that they have a little or no case against the guru by simply letting him leave the country on the promise that he will not return. Simultaneously, German authorities raid the hotel where the Bhagwan's former secretary, Sheela, and her minions are living. They are extradited to the United States -- Sheela gets four years in the slammer and her lieutenant, an Australian woman, always willing to implement assassination orders (albeit ineptly) is sent to jail for ten years. The Bhagwan dies in India but his cult grows and now has world-wide membership. Sheela moves to Switzerland where she operates nursing homes specializing in the care of what she calls "dements" and Alzheimer's patients. (Although she seems to run a cheerful, tidy, and compassionate operation, on the evidence of the film, I don't know that I would want my granny lodging with her.) The Australian woman reunites with her family, has her sentence commuted and several serious charges dismissed against her, and repents of her folly. The Bhagwan's lawyer still weeps when he recalls how his Guru was treated -- he is writing a book to vindicate the man that he calls "the most amazing presence on the planet.) The commune is bankrupted and implodes. Later, another cult, this time a fundamentalist Christian one, takes over the huge, abandoned commune and turns it into a kind of Bible resort. The town of Antelope, once named Rajneesh city reverts to a ghost town, something that seems to be fine with its low I. Q. inhabitants.
This whole story is like some kind parable or fantasy imagined by Jonathon Swift.
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