Transformation

“Assholes!” screamed Werner Erhard at the attendees of his Erhard Seminars Training, alias est, a Me Decade phenomenon that attracted 750,000 people globally between 1971 and 1984. With no formal certification but a passion for world philosophies, Erhard (né Jack Rosenberg) brought grown men to tears and turned est into the urtext for modern self-help courses. This sympathetic documentary charts his rise and fall, spending too much time defending the man instead of analyzing his forceful oratory; woefully short clips from est’s heyday are electrifying.