{"id":881212,"date":"2026-09-05T18:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/881212\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T18:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T18:22:12","slug":"jane-campion-matt-dougherty-on-their-telluride-doc-the-natural-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/881212\/","title":{"rendered":"Jane Campion & Matt Dougherty On Their Telluride Doc ‘The Natural State’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Was the Indian born \u201canti-guru\u201d U.G. Krishnamurti<\/a> a destroyer or a builder? Was he cruel or compassionate? The answer to both questions may be \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch questions, in fact, may not be the right ones to ask about the man variously described as a teacher, philosopher, maverick mystic, and enlightened person. What seems crucial is the impact he had on people and the distinct possibility that he gave those who orbited him what they needed most \u2013 knocking down their ego or dismissing them as trivial, in some cases \u2013 to achieve spiritual freedom.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Natural State<\/a>, a documentary about U.G. and his seismic effect on so many, holds its world premiere Saturday at the Telluride<\/a> Film Festival in Colorado. It\u2019s directed by Matt Dougherty<\/a> and executive produced by Jane Campion<\/a>, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who knew Krishnamurti personally. Watch the trailer below.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a real generosity in the way he helped people. And sometimes the help was harsh,\u201d Campion tells Deadline in an exclusive interview. \u201cYou did feel like sometimes that whoever was talking to him, he would appear to pick up \u2014 in a contrary way or in a sympathetic way \u2014 their tone or their sensibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA Sine Altera Production<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong those who desperately sought guidance from U.G. was Julie Thayer, a wealthy woman and mother from New York who left behind her life there to follow Krishnamurti in the Swiss Alps or just about anywhere else he went. She filmed him constantly, obsessively documenting his every move and utterance, and that archive, including journals she kept, became the basis of The Natural State.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI stumbled on Julie\u2019s journal online,\u201d Dougherty explains. \u201cAnd while you read it, you see so much of it has to do with her actually filming all this material\u2026 I just contacted her\u2026 and right away she was like, \u2018Yes, if you want to do something with it.\u2019 She didn\u2019t know me from another guy in the street. She agreed right away, which was pretty amazing to me. Neither of us had any idea what we were signing up for though, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt became a 10-year-journey to get the film made. Approaching the story with proper assiduity would not be quick work, and Campion likens the quest to Ahab\u2019s pursuit of the white whale. She jokes, \u201cI start to call him \u2018Moby Matt\u2019 now because he\u2019s been on this project for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the film shows, Julie Thayer became immediately convinced of U.G.\u2019s wisdom and that he was just the person to \u201cdestroy her ego,\u201d the totalizing goal she sought. Campion, meeting Krishnamurti the first time, was less persuaded of his gift. She tells Deadline she and others met U.G. at a hotel in Sydney when he was visiting Australia.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Executive<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tExecutive producer Jane Campion<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Grant Matthews<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was a pretty strange event. He didn\u2019t seem anything like an enlightened person,\u201d she recalls. \u201cWe were not convinced at all\u2026 We just thought, what a bizarre little old guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe continues, \u201cI felt sorry for him being in Sydney with nothing much to do. So, I invited him to my place for a cup of tea, and he and everybody came and there\u2019s a little group of people following with him or around him. And I noticed that he made his own tea and washed his own cup and really didn\u2019t want any of the trappings of being looked after at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLater, U.G. and Jane went for a stroll. \u201cWe were walking together and I started to get incredibly strong bodily sensations. It wasn\u2019t like I thought, \u2018Oh, this is amazing. I\u2019m walking with the enlightened man.\u2019 I was thinking this is just odd bod. But these sensations were so powerful that I said to him, \u2018What are you doing? You\u2019re doing something.\u2019 And he said, \u2018No, I\u2019m not doing anything.\u2019 This is how strong [the sensations] were that I had had menopause at the time and I was bleeding the next day. And I\u2019d also had the sort of rash on my top arms and that had completely cleared up. It was like I had some sort of cellular, I don\u2019t know, transference, and I felt enormous love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Director<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDirector Matt Dougherty<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of David Schulze<\/p>\n

\n\tDougherty came onto the documentary project well after U.G.\u2019s death in 2007 (at the age of 88). He wasn\u2019t sold on U.G.\u2019s legitimacy.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI come from a background of my parents having been in a fundamentalist Christian cult, so I was very skeptical and jaded about any of these teachers,\u201d he admits. \u201cI was sort of like, \u2018Maybe this person\u2019s enlightened, but wait, what do they want? There\u2019s some angle somewhere, I\u2019m sure.\u2019 And then when I came across U.G., he seemed very different than all these other people. He was sort of the opposite: \u2018Go away, nothing to sell you, nothing to get.\u2019 So, then that really fascinated me. Maybe this guy really has it, or maybe this is just some sort of reverse psychology, clever con.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKrishnamurti didn\u2019t so much teach as listen to those who felt compelled to gather around him, and then reacted to what they were saying. Sometimes his words could appear mean, and these dressing downs came to be referred to as \u201cblastings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis precepts, if they can be called that, were unorthodox. He didn\u2019t believe in cause and effect, he felt language was misleading, viewed \u201cthought\u201d as a purposeful human distraction, and that pursuing enlightenment, self-improvement, etc. was absurd. He did believe in a natural state of humans \u2013 one that was biological and divorced from conscious thought.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe did always promote the idea of the natural state, which is the body has the wisdom and it\u2019s at ease, natural. That\u2019s all there is,\u201d Campion says. \u201cThe mind is really a kind of little devil that we have to live with\u2026 I mean, God, I get so sick of mine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKrishnamurti\u2019s compassion for others was not of an obvious kind. Referring to him, Dougherty invokes Nietzsche, \u201cThis quote of his that, \u2018a good friend is a hard bed to sleep on.\u2019\u201d He adds, \u201cIs that just a justification for abusive behavior or is it something that very few people will be able to pick up on, but if they do, something transformative can happen to them? So, keeping that as a kind of question, these are the frames that we can look at it with. How can you ever come to a final answer? Each person will have their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCampion harbors no doubt about U.G. \u201cIt\u2019s maybe corny, but I loved him,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s as simple as that for me. I wasn\u2019t asking is he real or isn\u2019t he real? I knew I couldn\u2019t know. I felt a lot of love and the freedom, the sense of him being a free man was something like a gift to experience\u2026 To me, it was like a surrealist guru, like a Duchampian kind of someone who exhibits a toilet and says that\u2019s art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo fascinated by U.G. was Campion that created a television series inspired by him, Top of the Lake.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI felt like after he died that I wasn\u2019t going to meet anyone like that again,\u201d she observes. \u201cAnd I wanted to create a kind of idea of a postmenopausal women\u2019s camp where they all gathered together to be with a female version of U.G., which was GJ, played by Holly Hunter. And I\u2019d shown Holly Hunter the tapes of U.G., and she started to get a few mannerisms down. At first, she was absolutely terrified. I think she wanted to drop out of it\u2026 and then she had a great deal of fun with the character.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOf U.G., Campion says, \u201cI\u2019m an apologist for him, always.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDougherty doesn\u2019t feel the need to be so partisan, accepting the concept of \u201cperceptual indeterminacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy motivation was to give U.G. the U.G. treatment as well because he\u2019s taking everyone else apart. So, it\u2019s important to take him apart too,\u201d he insists. \u201cThat\u2019s a question the film asks is does our expectation of an awakened or enlightened person fit within the conventions or norms of our society? But even still, it\u2019s sort of like you have to take the piss out of him. You can\u2019t just let him sit on a pedestal because that would also be the worst betrayal for someone like him in a way. He did not court that.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tU.G. Krishnamurti won\u2019t be on a pedestal per se in Telluride, but in a temple of cinema, there to ponder on the big screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the trailer for The Natural State here:<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Was the Indian born \u201canti-guru\u201d U.G. Krishnamurti a destroyer or a builder? Was he cruel or compassionate?…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":881213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,450600,450601,344,75471,75894,450602,450603],"class_list":["post-881212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-jane-campion","tag-matt-dougherty","tag-movies","tag-telluride","tag-telluride-film-festival","tag-the-natural-state","tag-u-g-krishnamurti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/881213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}