Movies - W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

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	Movies - W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism is a 1971 film by Dušan Makavejev that explores the relationship between communist politics and sexuality, as well as exploring the life and work of Wilhelm Reich. It features interviews with Reich's children Eva and Peter.

Sub-plots of the film

The film is a series of plots and interviews intercut with one another. Despite different settings, characters and time periods, the different plots produce a single story of human sexuality and revolution through a montage effect. The film's subplots are Toy Soldier, Orgonon, Betty Dodson, Yugoslavian Communists, Transexual Interview, Screw Magazine, and Nancy Godfrey and Jim Buckley.

Toy Soldier

The Toy Soldier is the work of poet and performance artist Tuli Kupferberg who, dressed as a soldier parodies the war, and the sexual nature of man's fascination with guns by masturbating his toy rifle. The film stock used in this segment is late 1960s film colour, and suffers from light bleaching effects in the "on-location" filming. The most common shot sequences used are full-body, middle distance shots, which challenge the viewer with the stage-performance aspect of these sequences. The "Toy soldier" plot commences early in the film, in a poor New York neighbourhood plastered with pro-communist slogans. Two female assistants help the male performer prepare his costume. During the middle part of the film, the performance artist storms areas of affluent, business oriented New York. As part of the climax of the film, the soldier's gun masturbation is intercut with other orgasmic sequences.

Orgonon

This documentary part of the film focuses on Reich's work pioneering vegetotherapy and his treatment by the American community in which Orgonon (Reich's research centre and home) was based. This plot features interviews with Eva and Peter Reich (Reich's children), practitioners of vegetotherapy, friends of Reich, and community members who recall dealings with Reich. Footage of vegetotheraphy in progress is shown. This plot is primarily at the beginning of the film, and lulls the audience into believing that neither montage, nor fictive material will be present in the film. Standard documentary techniques are used (flat interview photography, voice over, location shots minus characters). This plot fades towards the background as the film progresses.

Betty Dodson

Betty Dodson is an artist who asked friends to masturbate in her studio so she could draw them. Dodson discusses her experiences in drawing acts of masturbation, as well as her discussions within consciousness raising groups about female sexual response. The Dodson sequences are relatively straight forward documentary interviews, but the presence of Dodson's large scale drawing of a man masturbating dominates the background of the shots.

Yugoslavian Communists

Milena (played by Milena Dravić) and her roommate Jagoda (played by Jagoda Kaloper) are proponents of free sexuality and work democracy. Milena avoids her previous lover, the proletarian Radmilović (played by Zoran Radmilović) in order to court the Russian artist Vladimir Illych (played by Ivica Vidović). As Milena and Jagoda discuss freedom of sexuality as it relates to revolutionary freedom, Radmilovic pursues Milena by ripping down walls, to no avail. Radmilović drunkenly accuses the Yugoslavian ruling class of being a red bourgeoisie.

Milena is a metaphor for the Yugoslavian working class's struggle for liberation against the totalising influence of Russian communist state. Milena is killed when her sexual encounter with Vladimir Illych (the representative of Russian communism) goes awry. He, unable to fully experience his orgasmic urge, beheads her with his ice skate which is the film's metaphor for revolutionary theory. Makavejev dooms self-determination of the Yugslavian people, and the struggle of people worldwide for true freedom, to the fate of being totalised by Russian state communism, and the quest for sexual freedom to be overshadowed by "red fascists".

The Yugoslavian plot is primarily shot in interiors or sound stages. The coupling between Milena and Vladimir occurs in a winter exterior and river, generating both a divorce from Milena's previous life and a sense of eroticism combined with alienation. The use of a dramatic sequence in otherwise documentary material is confronting, and produces an effect similar to a literary essay. Milena's final declamation on sexual and revolutionary politics continues the film's subversion of its own formal construction.

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