Summer in Orange: Lokesh sees the film
Summer in Orange is a German film about the life and times of a small sanyassin commune in southern Germany in 1981. The movie is a first in that it is fiction with the main characters being sannyasins.
Just the fact that people were wearing malas, dressing in shades of orange, talking the talk and doing the sannyas dance made me sit up and pay attention. They even have one guy wearing an ‘in silence’ badge. The director catches the spirit and absurdity of the times and reminds the viewer that Osho was big news back then. Reasonably well researched the script had a couple of major flaws. The biggie was sannyasins being given mantras. Osho was never too hot on the Maharishi’s TM.
I found the film quite entertaining and once again found myself wondering how so many of us got caught up in that scene. The answer is of course Osho’s energy for the most part. Yet there was another element at play and that was Osho having caught a bit of the zeitgeist. Many early sanyassins (like myself) had been hippies and the commune trip was a natural progression along with the free love thing chucked in for good measure.
The villain in the story is a power-mongering sannyasin therapist, who seduces the ladies by telling them they have beautiful energy etc. He plays well in an encounter group session, where the main female role gets in touch with her inner child, in this case an abandoned one. The scene is played well enough to make you cringe and remember that some of those therapies were heap powerful medicine. What the lady in question comes to realize is that she is repeating her warped programme with her own children. The daughter is the star and her role is pretty much lifted directly from the novel ‘My Life in Orange’. The girl is not getting enough love from mum, who is caught up on her inner journey. Various issues are addressed, including jealousy and the selfishness of simply following your feelings.
Overall, the film held my attention for 90 minutes, although I must confess that I found it a little corny in places. The sannyasins portrayed are a lovable, albeit confused, social group surrounded by an unsympathetic society, whose life values don’t seem to add up to so much. There is a happy ending where social barriers drop and everyone gets together in a swinging party, replete with swaying sannyasins getting into an energy groove. This is mainstream commercial cinema and therefore don’t expect too much if you get a chance to see this film. I reckon there is still much unmined potential in this kind of film and a more intelligent, complete, mature and interesting movie about those times will one day manifest. In the meantime it is interesting to see how Osho and his sannyasins really did leave quite an impact on the general public and it is good to sit back and have a laugh about it, because it really was a bit of a joke and definitely not something to take too seriously.
All these documentaries and movies based on Sannyas life, seem to give a clear impression as if they have written the obituary of Osho´s work after His departure.
It is not disappearing, sannyas and Osho’s inspiration for it continue in the here now.
All what movies based on sannyas life, Shantam. You wouldn’t be exagerrating by any chance, would you, Shantam?
Ashram, Summer in Orange and that Sheela movie; all together they become plural. The last two on the silver screen; it is quite an achivement, who else has created so much mind churnning as OSho and His people did.
I think other then Osho no one else has ever dreamt to shake the monopoly of Christian beliefs in the west. Just the thought and effort is enough for me to Salute.
After all, we live in a market economy. Competetion is the mantra for growth and expansion!
Shantam, I think it is time for me to stop responding to your comments, because I find you to be almost completely stupid and therefore not much of a challenge. Your above comment is once more an attempt on your part to show that you are always right, while it also makes quite clear that you are not.
You originally said, ‘documentaries and movies’. Both are plural and you implied that there were a number of movies based on sannyas life, when in fact there are not. I actually opened my article with, ‘The movie is a first in that it is fiction with the main characters being sannyasins.’ This is true, but you being the kind of person that you are have to somehow contradict my statement. This might have been an unconscious move on your part but that is the objective truth.
You are someone who defines themself by being against something or someone, which ties in with your one man crusade with the people who run the resort. I might be wrong, but I believe you are suffering from some kind of inferiority complex. The logic being that if you fully accepted who you are there would not exist the need to create imaginery enemies or come away with hyperbolic mumbo jumbo like, and I quote, ‘who else has created so much mind churnning as OSho and His people did?’
I find your conclussion, replete with exclammation mark for emphasis, to be quite revealing also, ‘Competetion is the mantra for growth and expansion!’
It was easy to find an Osho quote to fit that remark and here it is….’When there is competition you are not a friend to others. You are an enemy and others are your enemies. The competitive mind lives in an inimical way, lives in hatred, lives in jealousy; its whole function is out of jealousy. And because of this kind of life man suffers, he remains in misery.’
And that, Shantam, is how I see you… a miserable man who is always complaining about others and creating enmity where none exists.
you are not a friend to others. You are an enemy and others are your enemies. The competitive mind lives in an inimical way, lives in hatred, lives in jealousy; its whole function is out of jealousy. And because of this kind of life man suffers, he remains in misery.
We heard this film is in German. Does it have subtitles in English Lokesh?
The film was not subtitled. I speak reasonably good German. I am sure when the dvd is distributed internationally it will then we subtitled.
I haven’t seen this film; nor is it likely that it will make it to a cinema near you, unless you happen to live in Deutschland. I’ve watched the trailer (twice), and read a couple of reviews, so clearly I am interested, wondering how it might reflect my own experiences in the German communes of the 1980s, courtesy of Sheela’s ‘grand reshuffle’.
My first impression is the brightness of the colours, a technicolour, Disneyesque presentation of reality. There is none of the faded lustre of Ashram in Poona (thanks, Parmartha, for posting the link for this), let alone the dark shadows in which take place the shocking denouement – the encounter group – of that documentary. This is a feel-good entertainment, a nostalgic fiction, and this in itself I find interesting.
Sannyas in Germany had a far greater impact on society at large than it ever did in Britain. It was part of the national psychodrama, as the postwar generation sought to extract itself from the nightmares still clouding their parents’ memories. Thanks to the high profile of the Far Out discos in all the major German cities – generally recognized as the best night clubs around – Bhagwan played an active role in the lives of ordinary folks, via the collective intensity of Friday nights. The Far Out offered an exotic taste of release from the humdrum, even for those who baulked at the further reaches of cultish behaviour.
So this movie seems to me to be nostalgia for a time when Germany started to fall back in love with itself. Significantly, the plot concerns the confrontation between inner city bohemians – communards – decamping to deepest conservative, catholic Bavaria. With my less than fluent understanding of German, I could at least appreciate that there is fun to be had in the confrontation between two very different modes of expression. There are tensions to be worked out, but, to be sure, it will all end happily, in an idyllic, Brahmanic, vision of elephants grazing alongside the bayerische cattle. Perhaps also, there is something prelapsarian in this, set in the time before the urgent re-examination of national identity demanded by German reunification.
It’s an evocation of lost innocence, but not the tortured navel gazing of My Life in Orange – even though the plot might invoke similar themes (the absentee parent, too distracted by the glamour of therapy and spiritual development to properly look after the emotional needs of her child).
Interesting post, Hafiz. I would not have too high expectations about this film’s content. It has its moments, but the main thing to remember is that this is pop culture…no big insights, just good clean middle of the road fun.