Horst_In_Translation Review of Ram Dass, Going Home

Ram Dass, Going Home (2017)

Always soothing, sometimes mind-changing

[6/10 · 29 April 2018]

"Ram Dass, Going Home" is an American Netflix documentary from 2017 that is the first filmmaking credit for director Derek Peck here on imdb and for that, it is a pretty good achievement. This one takes us into the life and world of spiritual icon Ram Dass, at the final stages of his long life apparently. The one thing I liked a lot is that he narrated almost the entire thing himself. But as a negative consequence, i must also say that the one part where we hear somebody else feels pretty much out of the picture. In terms of the contents, some of it is really good, other moments feel a bit.. well not pretentious, but lets say not as educational and spiritual as they want them to be. But the overall outcome is still pretty good and I can see that this little film could even be mindblowing for some audiences. For me it was just good I guess. The ending was maybe the highlight, but there is more to it before that as well. I still believe that maybe it could have been a better idea for them had they chosen the 90-minute route. So we don't really find out about Ram Dass a lot, who he is and what he did in his life, whch means it helps if you knew him before watching this one and I must say I did n ot which may have hurt my overall perception a little bit. And I am pretty sure most people here in Germany or Europe too have not heard of him. But the positive is definitely far more frequent than the negative. The music is really good too. In the end, it was a close call if I should choose 3 or 4 stars out of 5, but I went for the former. Maybe a rewatch will change my decision one day. Thumbs up and you really wanna check this one out.