WR: Mysteries of the Organism

(1971)

★ 6.2 IMDb · 100 votes

Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Comedy

Year: 1971

Runtime: 85 мин

Country: Germany, Yugoslavia

Director: Dušan Makavejev

Cast: Milena Dravić, Ivica Vidović, Jagoda Kaloper, Tuli Kupferberg, Zoran Radmilović, Jackie Curtis, Miodrag Andrić, Živka Matić, Dragoljub Ivkov, Nikola Milić

Plot

What does the energy harnessed through orgasm have to do with the state of communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Only counterculture filmmaker extraordinaire Dušan Makavejev has the answers (or the questions). His surreal documentary-fiction collision begins as an investigation into the life and work of controversial psychologist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich and then explodes into a free-form narrative of a beautiful young Slavic girl’s sexual liberation.

A dense film that cuts up footage of a primary plot of two young Yugoslavian girls, one a politico and the other a sexpot, and an affair with a visiting Russian skater. Mixing metaphors of Russia's relationship with Yugoslavia, intercut with footage and interviews with Wilhelm Reich and Al Goldstein of Screw magazine. The film applies Reich's theories of Orgone energy and analogies of Stalinism as a form of Freudian sexual repression. Also known as W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism in English subtitled version. Was banned in Yugoslavia shortly after it was made.