A film crew is making a documentary about the controversial German scientist Wilhelm Reich who escaped from Europe to the US and developed a theory in which sex is the ultimate means of liberation of people, and that all the dictatorships were just manifestations of repressed sexuality. He died while his books were declared pseudoscience and burned. Numerous people are interviewed... A man with a machine-gun is walking through the streets... Women are sent to sexual therapy... In Belgrade, Milena is a highly sexualized woman who thinks that Communism should include sexuality. She meets a Soviet artists, Vladimir Ilyich, a highly political communist, and tries to seduce him. He reaches an orgasm - but immediately kills Milena by cutting her head off, not being able to cope with the liberation of his repressed sexuality.
Dusan Makavejev's bizarre satire "W.R.: Mysteries of Organism" became the only film from the whole of Yugoslav cinema that Roger Ebert included into his "Great Movies" list, yet it seems that this is more the result of the critic's lack of knowledge about the cinema from that country than some genuine greatness of the movie in question. Dozens of superior Yugoslav movies were made, yet "W.R." was remembered for its numerous controversies, resulting in a ban from Yugoslav authorities, and even by today's standards the movie can shock the conservative audiences. A part of its disconcerting impression lies in the fact that this is practically five short films glued into one, yielding a narratively confusing picture, since the film starts off as a documentary about Wilhelm Reich (claiming that each person has an average of 4,000 orgasms during their lifetime), then switches to numerous interviews about artists and their sexual art (one scene even has Nancy Godfrey stroking the penis of a lying man, only to then make a cast of his erection), then finally to the main story involving Milena (excellent Milena Dravic) who wants to promote free sexuality.
Her highlight is obviously her comical "political" speech towards people in an apartment complex ("No excitement can ever equal the elemental force of the orgasm. That's why politics attracts those among us whose orgasm is sub-standard, defective, disturbed or premature!... Deprive them of free love, and they'll seize everything else! That led to revolution. It led to fascism and doomsday. The goose-stepping, mass-marching orgasm! The bloodstream orgasm of the alcoholic or junkie! The cerebral orgasm of dogmatics or religious mystics!"). It implies that all the dictatorships are just manifestations of sexual repression, resulting in a black humored, but delicious ending in which a Russian communist reaches an orgasm - only to then kill Milena, unable to cope with the fact that all his loud ideology was just a sexual compensation for his virginity and impotence. This message was so subversive, even implying the Tito-Stalin split as a fight of sexual liberation, that the movie was even banned in the USSR, as well. Makavajev's attempt to blend sexual counter-revolution with communist revolution is not for everyone's taste, especially since numerous archive footage is sometimes garbage and could have been cut, yet there is a deeper meaning in all of this mess, when one thinks about it at the end, which makes its cult reputation somewhat justified.
Grade:++
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