WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) User Reviews

A farcical work by a master of comic timing and sensual exhibition

[Nazi_Fighter_David · 6/10 · 21 September 2008]

The plot concentrates on Wilhelm Reich's controversial vital energy… Reich believes that unless a mysterious universal phenomenon called "orgone energy" is discharged naturally through sexual union, obsessions and compulsions will erupt...

The film is a collection of these sorts of neuroses, done with exceptional skill and comic action, set in modern-day Yugoslavia… The main character is Milena Dravic, who shouts from her heavily populated apartment: "Politics is for those whose orgasm is incomplete!" Complimenting the idealistic Milena are two female sexologists who are obsessed with the physical nature of human relations...

The film is a blast at repression of any kind—political or moral—and a poem to uninhibited sexual intercourse... Repression sickens and enslaves, whereas nature's physical pleasure sets the human spirit free…

There is an abundance of vivacious sexual encounters, much nudity, and constant immersing into other social taboos, but the film's coup de grâce is a natural mixing of erotica, humor, and politics...

Shocking, bizarre, confounding, beautiful, courageous...

[Groverdox · 8/10 · 12 February 2016]

WR:Mysteries of the Organism is a kaleidoscope of images and sounds, one long montage of bizarreness that is very hard to pin down or come close to understanding.

The movie begins as a documentary about Wilhelm Reich, the man whose theories about sex and the body landed him in jail and have been more or less forgotten, despite tapping into the counterculture of the time with figures like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs adherents of his theories about life energy.

The movie soon turns weirder, with sex artists making moulds of erect penises, a man running around with a toy rifle he masturbates for the camera, a random transvestite, and confronting footage of modern day psychotherapists who have co-opted aspects of Reich's teaching, ie. that the boundary of touch should be broken in therapy and that patients should undress down to their underwear. They are also shown screaming and shouting and at one point, taking hold of the therapist's hands and apparently sucking on them like a baby would their mother's nipple.

Perhaps weirdest of all - and this is how you know you're in a Dusan Makavejev movie - is the part of all this that is not documentary but was scripted and filmed for the movie. A tale of a female sexual revolutionary who lives with a mostly naked woman, the revolutionary dons a helmet and gives an address to the working classmen who live in her block of flats, a rousing ode to the power of sexuality. Later she meets a Soviet ice skater and things take a turn for the worse, as well as the bizarre, when she turns up dead and her decapitated head speaks on the coroner's metal dish.

It is not possible to make sense of a movie like "Mysteries of the Organism" while you watch it. It's like great poetry: you just let the images wash over you. Afterwards, writing a review like this, it seems pretty clear that the Reich part of the movie sets the stage for us to see sex as something precious and not the be interfered with by the tools of government. The latter part of the movie shows how this has gone wrong, with the movie-within-a-movie, and the frequent interjections of Stalin, shock therapy, and madhouses.

That the movie was banned in Communist Yugoslavia after it was made and its creator exiled is the real ending of this work.

Too loose and random for my taste

[zetes · 6/10 · 18 August 2008]

The film for which director Dusan Makavejev is best known. It's similar to his later Sweet Movie, which I watched last week, in that it's made up of a bunch of disparate parts edited together. The most prominent thread is a documentary about sexual psychiatrist and (pseudo-)scientist Wilhelm Reich, a refugee from Nazi Germany who fled to the United States, where he was ironically persecuted and imprisoned when the government became suspicious of his work. A second thread is fictional, set in Eastern Europe, and is about a sexually liberated woman (Milena Dravic) promoting sexual freedom in Communistic language. There are other smaller threads about Andy Warhol's transsexual protégé Jackie Curtis, a hippie with a gun who runs around New York City, a woman who makes dildos and probably a couple of other ones I'm not remembering. The film covers some interesting areas, but it's too loose and not interested enough in any of these things to engage in them. The separate bits began to fall apart, for me at least. Sweet Movie was kind of a mess, but it was a well-structured masterpiece in comparison to WR. I liked Sweet Movie a whole lot more.

Hardly boring - interesting filmmaking and commentary

[fiddybop · 1 October 2000]

I completely disagree with the comments of the previous reviewer. Personally knowing very little about the Orgone or Wilhelm Reich, I derived great enjoyment from this film. In fact, I popped in on the TV just to get an idea of its style and structure (without planning to watch it right then) and ended up getting sucked in and watched it all the way through. Makavejev's filmmaking (that I've seen) is quite different from the norm, but not in an overly self-conscious or self-serving way, like Hal Hartley's efforts. "WR" is egoless, simply using film to draw parallels and make observations that are done quite effectively in Makavejev's unique style. It reminded me of the "I am Curious" films, but those are also a bit too self-conscious for me. I also highly recommend Sweet Movie, a later film of his. I only wanted to post these comments in light of the previous user's comments, as we should all remain aware of how subjective one's tastes are from another's. I didn't like the previous user making such blanket statements like "I suppose it might be watchable enough for people who are familiar with Reich, but if you aren't, then I strongly urge you to avoid this film at all costs." when tastes are obviously so variant - remember, I knew barely anything about WR or the Orgone, and enjoyed the film tremendously. Thanks for your time.

Took me a while to realize this was supposed to be a comedy.

[Boba_Fett1138 · 6/10 · 14 August 2012]

Silly me I suppose. I had no idea what I was in for. I knew nothing about the movie and it caught me off guard.

At first I though this was being one of those artistic documentary like movies, in which a whole bunch of people are having deep thoughts about life and happiness. It took me a while to realize that it were all characters in this movie and it wasn't being a documentary at all. It's more a sort of satire and if you take it that way this movie is being pretty bearable and good enough for what it is.

Not that this movie is just for everybody though. It's the sort of cheaply made artistic movie, that's filled with metaphors and doesn't necessarily following a main plot line in it. Some people will hate it, while others shall absolutely love it. I was stuck in the middle somewhere.

Thing I liked about this movie is that it's also being the sort of movie that makes you think. It makes you think about what you're seeing and what the characters in it are trying to tell you with their actions and pieces of dialog. It's probably true that you could keep watching this movie over and over again and get more- or completely different things out of it, each time you watch it.

But it's still not my cup of tea. It's being a bit too vague and odd all at times and most of its themes don't even feel all that relevant anywhere in today's world and present morals and standards. Perhaps you should look at it more as a period piece, from a time when there still was sexual repression and communism and capitalism still seemed like a real threat to the world.

Still a great watch for some people. Just not for me.

6/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Definitely an anomaly, but Sweet Movie is his true masterpiece

[Stay_away_from_the_Metropol · 7/10 · 19 February 2022]

While this film is certainly an anomaly, I find it insane when people try to call this Dusan Makavejev's true masterpiece over Sweet Movie. While Sweet Movie is a thoroughly absurd, surreal, artistic masterpiece unlike anything I've ever seen, and one of the only films that has truly shaken me up since I hit my 30's, Mysteries of the Organism feels more like a plain-old documentary that chooses to focus on a very peculiar subject matter, with excerpts of narrative fiction spliced in that feel like they have almost nothing to do with the topic, and quite frankly don't add much to the experience, aside from one memorable (and relatively jarring) sequence towards the end of the film.

The title of the movie feels kind of comical after viewing, because it seems very obvious that the true title should be Mysteries of the ORGASM, as that's what the majority of the doc is about: the orgasm and obscure sexual practices. I'm not sure WHO I would recommend this to, but it's certainly a one-of-a-kind viewing. I will always think of one particular sequence, where the movie observes a cult-like group session in which participants practice specific breathing methods that lead to...somewhat frightening climaxes...

It's a mystery alright!

[NateManD · 10/10 · 10 May 2006]

WR: Mysteries of the Organism, is one unique if not messed up viewing experience. Part documentary and part fictional surrealist philosophical sex comedy, Serbo-Croatian director Dusan Makavejev assaults the viewers senses with imagery, music, politics and satire. "Mysteries of the Organism" is on many top 1000 film lists, but for some odd reason it is nearly impossible to track down. Just like Makavejev's other film "Sweet Movie", I was put on a several month waiting list on Amazon. Thank god for ebay! This is a film that screams for a DVD release, but I don't think many distributors want to touch it due to it's explicit sexuality and subversive elements. The film starts off as a documentary on Wilhelm Reich, a scientist who studied the orgon and used the human orgasm as a method for healing. Of course, similar to the scientist Tesla; his books were seized and burned by the U.S. government and FDA. Then the second part of the film deals with Milena, a sexually liberated Yugoslavian girl who makes revolutionary speeches on her apartment balcony. She says "The October Revolution failed by not excepting free love". Later she falls in love with a Soviet figure skater who's afraid to express his sexual feelings. So this film is a comedy, based on the politics of human sexuality. It mocks capitalism and communism for suppressing people's sexual desires. Now if only I could find the soundtrack. My rating is 10/10, which means I'll watch it again!

The Church Of Mad Love Is Such A Holy Place To Be

[loganx-2 · 6/10 · 18 August 2008]

There's a documentary in this film about Wilhelm Riech that is fascinating, and a mini-film about the relationship between a Yugoslavian activist and a Russian Ice skater, lots of old propaganda films featuring Stalin, and man dressed as a soldier walking around New York and reciting poems in voice over.

Willhelm Riech was a psychologist and communist studying Freud, who came to the conclusion that the orgasm was essential to health, life, and world socialism. From here became a celebrity, guru, anti-pornography activist, and a bit of a mad scientist, until his writings were seized and burned by the US. Food and Drug administration, and he was eventually incarcerated(though for what this film is unclear).

The mini-film seems weird at first but makes sense if you think of the man as Russia and the Soviet System (which banned Riech's work and drove him out, as would the US later), and the woman as Yugoslavia (where the director is from). According to Riech there can be no true communism or true democracy until sexuality is made free, and the workers maintaining a healthy regiment of orgasms (the bodies self regulating life energy?).

Like that crazy general in Dr. Strangelove, who became "enlightened" when he refused to give woman any more of his precious "life energy", Riech and director Makavejev and by extension Kubrik seem to think many of our political tensions have sexual relationships we ignore, until it manifests as it's inverse, violence. Which is what I gather the "talking head" at the end is supposed to signify, the horrors of the world, without Riech's orgasms, deep breathing and primal screaming (actually the part that made the most uncomfortable), and Orgone accumulator Boxes(which look a lot like small closets).

Riech's free love world is very much one of the 70's, a time before venereal disease, a time before public and ritual rape in Congo became the military weapon of choice(as a horrific 60 minutes report last night discussed...yeesh), before internet porn, but only a year after the Stonewall Riots, a strange time for sex and the state.

Anyway, it was very well made, the music by very early underground rock band "The Fugs" stands out a lot in particular. The editing though jarring at first, is also the great device of this film, alternating fact, fiction, and dramatization in ways which were revolutionary for its time and pretty fresh now. The real revolution of this movie is probably found in it's technical skill with the material, which veers from comic, to realistic, to pornographic without announcing itself.

The scene with everyone passing the egg yoke, was the one I found most effective. Nothing is said in that scene, but there's a palpable sexual tension and repulsion in it, that sets the tone for the rest of the movie.

"Absurdistan" is a word I learned, for life under Soviet control, how many felt like the bureaucracies had reduced their lives to a kind of absurd theater of Kafka story(people forced to publicly ask to be executed, etc.), a lot of the films and art to come under this umbrella is similarly fragmented and anarchic, which may help to explain "W.R. Mysteries of The Organism", which is an interesting, and very stylized, if dated curiosity, and look at sex at communism.

the holy grail of orgasmic worship

[jimi99 · 9/10 · 1 December 2002]

I have been trying to see this for many years, particularly after I discovered Reich in my reading in the early 80's, read some of his writings as well as a great biography "Fury on Earth". Now our library has it on a new video release, and I have to say it was worth the wait. It is a masterpiece of documentary insight into its subject Wilhelm Reich, of subversive cinema in that it has a great power to undermine the beliefs of the viewers/participators, and of classical comedy and drama as embodied (literally) in the "fictional movie" within the documentary. Occasionally punctuated by the wild and crazy NY poet/musician Tuli Kupferberg roaming the streets of Manhattan in full battle array and carrying an M-16 (I don't think they could get away with that these days, unless they had a Mr. De Niro in the cast.) Yes, it is blatant hippie/yippie revolutionary zeitgeist of 1968-1971, which was very much fueled by the father of the sexual revolution, Dr. Reich, who had died in 1957 in jail for not answering a subpoena to defend his claims of cancer cures. He said he would be judged by scientists but not by lawyers. Inasmuch as he was the only individual to have his books burned by both Hitler and the US government (FDA), his story and his philosophy should be more widely known, but of course he is still suppressed by some of the powers that be. The erotic content of "WR" is tame in the face of today's hardcore but all the more effective for it, in that Reich condemned pornography but glorified healthy sexuality above all else. And for those "doves" that still populate the earth by the millions or billions, the words and deeds of the good Dr. Reich, who was exiled by Hitler and then Stalin (who is shown in this documentary in some amazing pseudo-heroic films he had made of himself,) still resonate. As do the words of Tuli Kupferberg and his band The Fugs, on the soundtrack: "Kill, kill, kill for peace...Near or far or very middle East..."

Plotless menagerie of crude film clips

[SimonJack · 2/10 · 14 December 2017]

How anyone can consider this a movie is beyond me. "WR: Mysteries of the Organism" is a film for sure, but nothing like what one would recognize as a movie. It's a bunch of video footage -- mostly unrelated pieces -- put together as if in a "home" movie. One part has a biographical effort, and bits of history appear here and thee. It seems to mock Stalin, Communism, Nazism and even capitalism.

It has numerous references to sex and sexuality, and is fraught throughout with wanton pleasure and sex. There's no real plot. There are no acting roles. Except for narration, there is no script. Those who like something like this have a hard time arguing for anything more than enjoying erotic film. Sorry, folks, but without a plot, screenplay that one can follow, and connecting scenes with actors, this doesn't fit any definition of a play or movie that I've ever seen. While this may fit the Hollywood definition of "art," it seems to me to be more like trash.

Funny and thoughtprovoking...

[theemu · 10/10 · 15 April 2003]

Makavejev was always one of the clowns of the Third Cinema, and WR, his masterpiece, is no exception. Makavejev interweaves fiction, documentary, and found audio and video clips (a Stalinist propaganda film, electro-shock treatment footage) to create a fantastically bizarre but intelligent discussion of both the orgone energy theory of Wilhelm Reich and the relationship between Yugoslavia and the USSR in a post-Stalinist era.

I know. It sounds tedious, but it isn't. In fact, it's really fascinating. Among the clips Makavejev (a film theoretician in his own right, WR harkens back to the pre-Stalinist era of Soviet Montage) assembles are footage of performance art by the Yippie poet/singer Tuli Kapferberg and documentary clips of Jim Buckley, an editor for Screw Magazine, getting a mold of his penis made.

WR is bizarre, dogmatic, and at times, hard to watch, but having seen it twice now, I've come to appreciate its ways. By the time Vladimir breaks into song at the film's end, you'll be smiling too.

You Have Been Warned: this is not pleasant

[Tristan!-2 · 2/10 · 19 April 2006]

This is too disjointed to be enjoyable - even if you know a bit about William Reich. One story is a fictional account about a Yugoslavian woman who falls in love with a Russian ice skater, and is at least well filmed and interesting, but you can easily get lost in the surrealism. The other "stories" are factual: interviews with people from Reich's hometown, Jackie Curtis talking about his first gay sexual encounters, the editor of Screw magazine getting his penis cast, Tuli Kupferberg prancing around with a machine gun, and the most interesting parts: various doctors talking about Reich's orgone therapies, and the effect of orgasms on various patients. Oh, and we get to see one of the few remaining orgone accumulator and we even get some short snippets of a cloudburster - unfortunately that is not explained to the audience so you either know it's a cloudburster or you don't. Three things inherently wrong with this film - the attempts to be clever with the juxtapositioning renders the film quite incomprehensible; the white subtitles over an often white background means much of the footage cannot be understood (unless you speak Russian or Serbian) and, quite importantly, one image is so graphically disturbing that I will have difficulty dealing with it: we see a poor prisoner being given electroshock treatment by the Nazis. It's horrible, absolutely horrible, and whilst it's important that we know of the atrocities that happened in WWII and before, I would rather have been mentally ready for it. The scene is thrust on you suddenly, and it is extremely disturbing. Beware before watching this film, and decide whether you are really ready for a completely incomprehensible mind***k... with some nasty nightmarish scenes thrown in for luck. This is certainly not family viewing. You have been warned.

Not your run of the mill film.

[maeander · 9/10 · 13 January 2003]

I saw this originally at a showing at the British Film Institute years ago and it blew my mind. Every film student should see it. A subversive mix of politics and sex, it shows just how boring and middle class Monty Python, the Farrelly Brothers, et al really are. A non sequitur to the 9th degree, it shows the power that cinema can have on an audience. Considering the age of this film, it is incredible how outrageous it is. Once you've seen it, you will never forget it. It is truly a land mark film in the realm of the surreal. A must viewing for everyone.

The Citizen Kane of the Sixties!

[fez-9 · 8 September 1999]

WR is one of my two favorite films, and is widely considered by people knowledgable about the film and the era as "one of the most profound and humerous films of the decade". I call it the "Citizen Kane of the Sixties" because it did what the first "Citizen Kane" did earlier - it summarized the realities we all were living with in the Sixites in the Global Village - the reality of sexual repression in both the East and West, the horrors of the McCarthy Era in this country, the obsession with sports in Russia, etc., etc. It is no accident that a still from this film is on the cover of one of the greatest books on film, "Film As a Subversive Art" by film critic and founder of the NY Film Festival, Amos Vogel. I can understand why many Americans do NOT understand this film - the organization of the film, the two overlapping storylines, the music - all so different from the Hollywood material. However, it is considered by many including myself to be a masterpiece, as are all the films by its director, Dusan Makavejev. Together, he and Jean-Luc Godard are the two "Picassos" of film since WW II - and should both be held as two of the greatest filmmakers of all time.

Read First, then Watch

[theintriguing · 9/10 · 26 April 2006]

I loved the playfulness within the context of an enactment of a man's ideas. So to 'get' the film fully, perhaps one may want to read one or more of Reich's books. I have read (and enjoyed) Mass Psychology of Fascism. Good luck on your own interpretations and conclusions. The film really is brilliant in many ways. In the times in which we live it is interesting to look at a piece made decades ago that can and does speak to the possibility of a different way of life. In other words, this picture presents something bigger and more meaningful to those who care to interpret it. It is refreshing to see something that is not a documentary but not a typical narrative film. I hope more people find it as strange and fascinating as I did.

what the... ?

[onepotato2 · 4/10 · 5 August 2007]

This takes the form of seemingly everything from 1965 to 1975. It's a hippy-dippy, uncritical, anti-establishment goof on the work of Wilhelm Reich, with agit-prop sub-plot for good measure. 'What's New Pussycat?' meets 'Theremin.'

Wilhelm Reich's tenuously connected work and pseudo-scientific gadgets (WTF does the accumulator do? How do orgasms change cloudscapes?) are more like something a flakey "inventor" would make than a serious analyst. Just because a previously intelligent person suddenly declares a correspondence between any two things (war and chocolate cake, or... orgasms and Marxist Utopia) doesn't make it so. Just because a quack found some drama queens to indulge him doesn't mean the work was valid. His ideas are as odd and harmless as his punishment was draconian overkill. Another testament to the usual misuse of government to keep Joe Average feeling unthreatened, regardless of how oversensitive Joe's threat mechanism is. Reich (to me) had firmly lost the path of knowledge, but he didn't seem to be harming anyone. No one involved (Reich, his patients, the authorities) apparently knew much about moderation. Thank God that period is over and we've said goodbye to both Orgonon and the Police State.

The movie is amateurishly edited together with a side-narrative; a frigid wretch intones about sexual freedom, but can't actually make her way to a sexual event (with an ice skater) to save her life. Much better to talk and talk and talk about the state and it's repression of the perfect workers collective via sexual shame. Good times! This movie left me thinking that rank-and-file demagoguery (the preference of the individual to address society than another person) and the national urge to ramble on ad nauseum about half-understood political ideas, would have to be defeated before the Soviet chokehold could successfully be removed from the population. This half offers a few laughs but it fails to build.

It's not easy to watch due to weirdness and annoyance, but at least this movie engages provocative ideas, something most movies flee from. I left early, having got the (very repetitive) point.

an anarchic art-film with communists, sex, plaster-caster genitals, Stalin, gays, ice skaters, and mental patients all rolled into one

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 16 August 2007]

WR is not exactly a full-blown "perfect film". It is, without a doubt, one of the most in-your-face forms of personal, artistic and political expression put out in the period. Only Godard can be compared for something as demanding and daring as W.R., but even then there could be compromises due to his penchant for drawing out the facet of the cinematic essay. Writer/director Dusan Makavejev goes fearlessly into making a hybrid of documentary and fiction, where one sees a truly raw form take place in how he places his camera on subjects and on locales, and an attitude of recklessness in how he edits together the fictional segments (a free-love inspired communist Yugoslavian meets a more uptight male ice skater and fall somewhat in a kind of love surrounded by semantics) with archival footage and the documentary.

It's this same reckless quality and adherence only to throw out any typical narrative that makes W.R such a crazy milestone in the avant-garde (which, by the way, Makavejev says is only relative to other films). He could have just made a serious work about the writer/sex therapist Wilhelm Reich, or a romantic drama about two differing sides of the personifications of communist ideas played out, but he's discontent with making either or and does both, and more. It's a film of its time, but not trapped in it.

One of the best things that also comes out right away from W.R. is that it is, in the tradition of another cinematic anarchist like Godard, a full-blown satire. This is essential because without this spirit of mocking and criticizing the very things that Makavejev is praising (i.e. Leninist and Stalinist propaganda footage is inter-cut with footage from what must be committed folk at an asylum getting electroshock and knocking heads against the wall), the film would very quickly become preachy and didactic, and might have actually been more-so accepted by the Yugoslav censors.

It's the very act of humor about it all, of having sex as if in a kaleidoscope put to dry narration, or the crazy bearded guy with a helmet carrying around a gun and sometimes giving it a 'good time, or how some weird drunken neighbor literally crashes through the wall of the communist girl's apartment while he and the ice skater talk politics and her (very naked) friend does leg exercises, that makes it on the surface seem so outrageous.

And believe-you-me, it didn't get the "Luis Bunuel award" at Cannes for nothing! Going between a gay guy telling about his prime sexual experiences to seeing women and men in the throws of Reich's 'method' of releasing pent up tensions (this may be the only repetitive portion of the film, not s shocking to anyone who's seen any given episode of HBO's Real Sex, albeit for the period it's quite absorbing), and then back to Reich's theories that were crushed and burned as he died in a prison, and then back again to the Yugoslav 'love' story that ends with a few image that Jodorowsky might wince at.

And as this is all going on, Makavejev doesn't let the audience stop thinking, either. Behind a sequence like when Milena riles up the men in the building complex to have a free and healthy attitude towards communism is some truth, contained within what is obviously a parody of communist propaganda films are points that the viewer has to take into account, or at least to fill in some blanks as the film goes forward.

The lack of structure then, in a sense, is structured as such, and it becomes an act of participation to guess what might come next, of what might be either informative- like the history of Reich as writer and controversial figure, almost by bad luck, or about the delirious technique of the 'box' used by Reich on his patients- or entertaining, in ways that only a provocateur can handle. Now, take this as a fact, know what you're getting into before you seek out the Criterion DVD. It's quite a graphic film in terms of showing full on sex, aroused genitalia, and sometimes not in always the playful manner intended. But it's not simply that to look out for, though even by today's standards it's a bit surprising.

What makes W.R. such a unique and warped bird of art is how it challenges the viewer, provokes fully if not discussion then some kind of collision of intellectual and visceral reaction for those who at least meet the filmmaker halfway. Once in a while frustrating, but never ever boring, W.R. is a cinematic shock from a go-for-broke iconoclast.

a serious waste of film & time

[cfinde · 1/10 · 12 July 2008]

Not sure why I kept watching except maybe hoping it would get better.. but instead it couldn't find an ending for itself. There is no way the film had a shooting script to start with, merely lots of poor quality black & white film to splice together incoherently. To make it even more tedious there are white subtitles against white backgrounds in at least 90 per cent of the footage. The "comedy" is nonexistent but primal screaming, wailing, bogus techniques of healing are all there to make you squirm. Imagine that in 15 consecutive minutes you see: shock therapy, scream therapy, ice skating, Stalin, a mentally ill person banging his head against a wall, a plaster cast penis & a talking head without a body!! This film has to be a joke..if you took it seriously you must be on drugs while you watched it. Pretentious, amateurish, and trust me on this--a complete waste of approx 1.5 hrs that you could have been getting some sleep. By the way, did this director sleep with the director of Night Train to Venice?

Imaginative reconstruction of Reich's theories about sex and psychological, physical, and political health

[netwallah · 10/10 · 4 July 2006]

Not for the faint of heart, this polemical documentary approaches its subject—the relation of sociopolitical structures to human sexuality and psychology—from every possible direction, often randomly and sometimes with absurdist discontinuity. The director prefaces the film with these words (in the English language version): "This film is, in part, a personal response to the life and teachings of Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957)." The first section of the movie alternates between documentary footage and interviews about Reich, his theories, and the state suppression in the U.S. of his books and ideas. Basically, he argued that the orgasm involved a transfer of energy that was not only pleasurable but necessary for psychological as well as physical health, and he taught that the involvement of society at large or government in regulation of sexuality results in totalitarianism and widespread unhappiness. Reich's larger theories were soundly repudiated by the majority of psychologists and federal agencies, principally because they involved untested physiological notions and questionable therapeutic practices—the film seems to recognize this at the same time that it portrays the closing down of the Organon movement as a witch-hunt. Later the film shows other physical-psychological regimens—primal scream therapy—that seem pretty much on the same level as the Reichian exercises. Then the movie begins to add more and more ingredients, including material from the sexual freedom movement of the late 1960s—a ruby-tinted prismatic scene of a bearded young man and a long-haired young woman making love outdoors, interviews with masturbation advocate Betty Dodson, a visit to the office of Screw Magazine, interviews with a glitter-bedecked young transsexual, a practical demonstration of the methodology of the Plastercasters, who take molds of erect penises, and so forth. This is mixed with the absurdist political theatre of the period, notably, Tuli Kupferberg prowling around New York wearing a fake military outfit while the Fugs sing "Kill for Peace" in the background. This is connected, somehow, to an exaggerated dramatization of the political-sexual struggle in communist Jugoslavia, where two attractive young women, room-mates, address the stirring question—what is revolution without joy?—each in their own way, the brunette by making love with men, the blonde by lecturing her fellow-workers on the counter-revolutionary nature of sexual repression. She is attracted to a Russian figure skater, a Hero Artist, and tries to join with him in an ideal revolutionary act of making love. Afterwards he kills her, but she doesn't seem to mind, singing along with him and smiling from the autopsy table where her severed head has been placed. All through these episodes contrasting fragments of film are intercut, including official Soviet footage and reverential depictions of Stalin, exemplifying the propaganda of totalitarian rule, and then shots of Soviet shock treatments while the glowing words of revolution go on in the soundtrack, to random snippets of western materials. The film ends with a mournful song sung by the hero-murderer, and somehow the tone of the movie has shifted from its earlier stages—curiosity, defiance, joy, anger—to an elegiac mood. It's sad that we've still learned so little. It strikes me that this movie needs footnotes more than most. It's dated, firmly stuck in 60s anti-establishment culture. This is both its strength and, because so much happens that depends on allusion and time-bound references, modern audiences just won't get it.

ejaculate a piece of ART and be free

[omael · 10/10 · 4 February 2007]

This is the first time that I ma actually making a work of Art critic, nevertheless the subject is quite peculiar. Dusan Makavejev's film "W.R. Mysteries of the Organism" is a pure masterpiece. It contains a very subtle message narrated in rather "violent" way and it was filmed as life cycle, so the title is a true one. It begins by an copulation n finishes, as every drama does, with a brutal murder/death/kill. The political weight of this film is enormous, because Makavejev is making a story line between sexual potential/frustration and communist dictatorship view through eyes of a politico/sexually engaged young women in the early seventies Yugoslavia. He used every Yugoslav cliché from that time to draw us a picture of it's conservatives and political Puritanism by just staging that young women as a sexual revolution symbol, fighting against the Yugoslav male dominance through desire of free and non-conditioned love and happiness. The aesthetic approach was the most interesting one. It is mixture of a documentary and played feature, the first half of the film is concentrated on the document footages of William Reich's philosophy concerning the sexual liberation, and personally I do not know much about it, but it seams quite obscure. The only thing that came clear to me, from his theory, is that we are so conditioned, by the SYSTEM, that we are afraid of letting go our feelings and desires and so w become frustrated and full of hate and extremely receptive to the political dictatorship dogmas. This film is a half staged homage to W.R. and his, I can say, ideology. Half of picture is taking place in the States, and the other half in Yugoslavia, constantly parachuted by the flicks of Stalin. Milena Dravic's acting is simply brilliant and extremely convincing, I am so use in seeing her playing some goodie goodies, but in this one she show us an another face of a determined women in an open combat for the equality of sexes and female liberation, but not just female she is taking a rather androgynous way of expressing the need for the sexual EVOLUTION, in that time it was considered as a revolution, but it lost it's pace, we did not evolve, but that sexual revolution is being explained through the utopian communist lens, which is interesting in it's own surreal way. This film in its time was more than Avant Garde, today it is Avant Garde because if we just simply change the political context to the contemporary one, we will get almost the same thing. The message is: FREE YOUR MYSTERIOUS BODY AND UNFOLD YOUR DREAMS, CONFRONT WITH YOURSELF.

Interesting commentary on the sexual revolution

[tomgillespie2002 · 13 February 2011]

Directed by Serbian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev (also known for directing 'Sweet Movie', and the Australian produced 'The Coca-cola Kid'), the film mixes documentary and narrative cinema, to comment on the infiltration of Soviet Communism, sexual politics/sexual revolution, in a political satire. The main drive of the film to begin with is the work of Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Dr Wilhelm Reich: His theories of Organon therapy (use of static electricity), and the connection between neuroses in people that is rooted in physical, sexual and social surroundings. This connects also with the work of Alexander Lowen, an American psychotherapist (and student of Reich's), who practices and teaches Bioenergetic analysis which uses therapeutic body work to associate the mind with the body, and in theory release repressed energy through the body sexually without the act of physical sex. I observed in these sequences a kind of connection to the work of Arthur Janov, and his primal scream therapy.

The narrative section of the film tells the story of Milena (Milena Dravic) and her sexually promiscuous flatmate Jagoda (Jagoda Kaloper), and their theories and speeches of sexual revolution: "The October revolution was ruined when socialism rejected free love". They meet a Russian communist figure skater, Ivica (Vladimir Ilivich), who they seduce. But Milena soon discovers that communism has no time for sexuality unless it is first met with physical violence. This seems to be a metaphor for the struggle against Stalinist communism within Yugoslavia since the second world war. But in the film Ivica seems somewhat deluded by the concept of communism (as he states, "communism is a Latin word meaning communal), whilst almost being made rigid by the sexual intentions of Milena.

The most interesting part of the film is the first part that focuses on the life and work of Wilhem Reich (hence the W. R. in the films title). He first started working in psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud in the 1920's, but after writing books such as 'The Mass Psychology of Fascism', fled Austria for America, where he settled in Maine. He worked on his theories of orgone therapy, and developed the orgone accumulator, an organic box lined with lead that individuals would sit in and is theorised as giving both therapy to the bodies organs and to sexuality (The use of the orgone accumulator was even endorsed by William S. Burroughs.). Eventually Reich was arrested (more than likely the victim of situation - i.e. he was from behind the iron curtain), and viewed as insane - despite being tried in court. All of his books were burned in New York, supervised by the federal food and drugs administration agents (take from that what you will).

It is an interesting film. The different strands are connected by the theories of Wilhelm Reich. But it's one of those films that is probably more interesting to talk about than watch as it is incredibly slow moving, and at times seems to focus on activities (such as bioenergetic analysis), as group fad, and seems to almost fall into a 'new age' enlightenment message. Released in 1971, this would make sense, as the sexual revolution was in full 'swing'. Despite all of this it is a relatively enjoyable piece of cinema, with some nice ideas in it. But again, the life of W R far outshines the film as a whole.

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a film to forget

[dbotoreales · 2/10 · 28 December 2006]

I have seen this film with my sister in law. She is 22 and studies Audio-visual Communication at the University. At the same time, she enrolled 2 years ago in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She wants to become a dramatist. I recognised that she's got a brilliant future as professional. Friends, family, teachers and I admire her talent, but I feel certain reluctance to her tendency to consider good films (or novels, or whatever)only those which are full of vacuous symbolism, outdated contra-cultural plots (when not completely plot less), without regarding the minimal care of the style, the elegance, a well pace,...

All this you can find it in this horrible pastiche called W.R. - Misterije Organizma. The first part of the film is o.k. The director tried to make a documentary about W.R., but all of the sudden, changed his mind, and includes footage of another fictional film. The rest of the film is an endless irritable succession of naive sex scenes, dulled speeches, pretentious and clumsy dialogs,...: In just one word a completely absurdity. I wish I could be scandalised at least!!. But it doesn't provoke anything to me but a headache!! Directors like Luis Buñuel (La Edad de Oro), David Lynch (Lost Highway, etc.), Bergman, Dreyer, Lars von Trier, Jean Cocteau, Alain Resnais (The last year in Marienbad and Hiroshima mon amour)etc., show more cinema and more elegance and taste in just one photo-gram of their films than in all this distasteful film. A perfect torture, which lasted around 90 minutes, but fortunately they weren't enough to cause a collective suicide in the movie theatre.

Finally, I could stand that my sister in law preferred this sort of films to Billy Wilder's films.

Well, no comment...

Orgasmic

[dmw26 · 8/10 · 5 April 2000]

This film treads a remarkably thin (perhaps non-existent) line between self-consciously satirical art and anarchic pornography. A sort of sexually liberated Eisensteinian journey, Makavejev proves that truth is always stranger (or at least more disturbing) than fiction. Waxing brilliant at times, and at others resigning to a sort of "Pull My Daisy" super-realism in the beat tradition, there are few films from this period that effect a more riveting commentary on Communism (whether or not any conclusions are actually reached).

WR: Mysteries of the Organism

[jboothmillard · 5/10 · 9 April 2017]

I found this film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I had no idea what the film would involve, I only read a little about it before watching, I was willing to give it a chance. The WR of the title stands for Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian-born psychologist and sexologist, his most famous theory was of orgone energy - a vital, primal, non-material element believed to permeate the universe. Basically this film is all about the theories of sex, erogenous satisfaction and sexual repression, as well as social systems and political freedom, it switches between documentary and fictional mode often. The documentary side has some contributions from scientists in the fields of relationships and sex, and public opinions; and the the fictional side involves the romance between a Yugoslav girl and an inhibited Russian skater. The also serves as a homage to the work of Reich, and includes archive footage from propaganda features, and footage of real couple having sexual interactions. Starring Milena Dravic as Milena, Jagoda Kaloper as Jagoda, Zoran Radmilovic as Radmilovic and Ivica Vidovic as Vladimir Ilyich. I agree with critics that this film does not focus on the work Reich, his theories or his free-loving disciples, and I agree that allegorical fictional love story going on is exceedingly clumsy, but I can see why this film has achieved a cult status, it is not a bad experimental documentary drama. Worth watching!

Worth watching

[Ianfidel · 9/10 · 9 June 1999]

While this film can be difficult to watch, it is nonetheless a fascinating look at international politics and beliefs, especially as they relate to sex. Ideally, one should watch it with friends and discuss the message to get a fuller understanding of what's going on in the film.