W.R. - Misterije organizma (1971)

W.R.: Misterije Organizma, made by Makavejev in 1971. W.R. stands for Wilhelm Reich, the controversial psychoanalyst who tried to put together Marx and Freud, whose books were burned in Germany in the 30's, and in US in the 50s, the guy who fled from from Nazi Germany to become later a victim of McCarthyism.

The movie of Makavejev is a documentary intercut with a feature. A documentary on Wilhelm Reich, using archive footage and interviews (edited in a way that leads to parody), and a story about a young woman in Yugoslavia of the sixties, an ardent adept of Reich and of the accomplishment of Communist revolution through sexual freedom. She falls for a Soviet ice skater, who cannot leave the Communist dogma and prefers abstinence, so he beheads her. As crazy as all these sound, add to this mix other independent sequences with sex, gays, masturbation, Stalinist propaganda footage, followed by scenes with electroshock applied on political prisoners in Soviet Union. The score is in counter-tempo with the images, suggesting new senses for everything, suggesting also associations with other famous film works.

It is not a movie for the weak ones, definitely not for non-adults. If you have the guts to watch it, it is cathartic.

W.R. - Misterije organizma: 1/10
(video by enigmaforce1971)

W.R. - Misterije organizma: 2/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 3/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 4/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 5/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 6/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 7/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 8/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 9/10
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W.R. - Misterije organizma: 10/10
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(Dušan Makavejev)

Dušan Makavejev

Dušan Makavejev is a highly unconventional movie maker, ready to destroy any cultural idols he is encountering on his way, be them sexual taboos and theories about sexual liberation altogether, political dogmas from the East and from the West, well established principles of the cinema art, everything. Think at his much younger compatriot Kusturica, think at Godard, think at Oshima. Actually Makavejev is almost the same age with Godard and Oshima, the same generation, the same nihilistic approach. Think also at Fellini in his later movies: the same baroque scope, the same baroque craziness. But think firstly at Godard.

No wonder Amos Vogel has chosen an image from a Makavejev's movie to illustrate his monumental Cinema as a Subversive Art. I will give you here a short excerpt from exactly that movie, W.R.: Misterije Organizma, and I promise the whole movie for my next post.

W.R. - Misterije organizma: Scene from the movie
(video by smitrof)

• W.R.: Misterjie Organizma (1971)
  

(Jack Goelman)