WR: Mysteries of the Organism

Makavejev’s experimental 1971 film, WR: Mysteries of an Organism, explores, as a filmic collage, an assortment of social and political issues. The film explores the counter-culture emphasis against the social norms of oppression over sexuality. Makavejev also exercises cinematic autonomy by filming numerous sexually explicit scenes, which leave no anatomical details behind.

The film first aligns us with doctor Wilhelm Reich, which is presumably what “WR” may stand for among other suggested acronyms such as World Revolution. The documentary-like beginning informs us of Reich’s orgone box, which he is eventually prosecuted for, and his particular school of therapy. The film uses many Freudian devices and symbols to constantly juxtapose human behavior, sexuality, and politics. Makavejev exploits the commoditization of capitalism and the restrictive elements of communism. Under communism the individual is treated as insignificant. That means that a person’s appointed role is in the best interest of the group; and that creative (artistic) and sexual energy are seen as destructive, unproductive elements in society.

Makavejev’s collage of symbols, and allusion has us questioning every image the film presents. The film gets caught up in a series of events, which may not be temporally simultaneous, but reveal a concurrent exhibition of scenes whereby the idea is about exercising liberation. For instance, Tuli Kupferberg, from the underground band the Fugs, is walking around New York stroking a toy gun, awkwardly walking around businessmen and other people all the while the song “Kill for peace” is playing. Another display of this new liberation is when he visits the office of Screw magazine, or when we, in the narrative portion of the film, see the nude young couple chasing each other around the room promiscuously exploring one another.

The overall coherence is only secondary to the visual demonstration of images and ideas that Makavejev finds schematically important in understanding the contemporary international social and political issues of the day. He employs phallic references throughout the many images and ideas he proposes, as device that symbolizes among other things, a sort of masturbation. For instance, in one scene Kupferberg is standing on a bridge, wearing army fatigues, stroking his toy machine gun. This symbolic reference shows war and violence as a form of masturbation. The same idea is true for capitalism, having Tuli walk all around New York city through these crowds of people who, for the most part, buy into the materialism and commodity that capitalism sells, which also exploits another form of masturbation. These non-necessitous actions, such as commercialism and materialism, are all capitalistic frauds that occupy our time. Juxtaposed, however, with what Makavejev says about communism takes us from one extreme to another. The communist ideal reinforces a group mentality, while the capitalist ideal enforces mass consumption as means of exploring individualism (but really, it enforces a norm of materialism, which the group or society is encouraged to follow).