WR: Mysteries of the Organism

Dušan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) is a curious juxtaposition of a fictional plot set in Yugoslavia and a documentary concerning the life and beliefs of radical thinker Wilhelm Reich, intertwined with archive footage of Mao, torture, electric shock therapy, un-simulated sex, interviews with Warhol superstar Jackie Curtis, clips of Fug's front-man wandering the streets of New York with a toy machine gun, amongst other things, which combine to create what Peter Cowie referred to as a "dazzling collage" of a movie.

Described by Amos Vogel in his book Film as a Subversive Art as "a hilarious, highly erotic, political comedy which quite seriously proposes sex as the ideological imperative for revolution and advances a plea for Erotic Socialism", much of WR: Mysteries of the Organism deals with the political differences between Makavejev's native Yugoslavia and Communist Russia. This is perhaps most obvious within the two characters within the fictional Yugoslavian sections of the film who come to represent both Yugoslavia and Russia; Milena Dravic's character and the Russian figure skater she attempts to seduce and sexually liberate, named Vladimir Ilyich blantantly after Lenin. In one of the films most memorable scenes, we witness Dravic address a group of Yugoslav workers and peasents, telling them to "fuck merrily and without fear!", and suggesting that free love was where the October Revolution failed. However, Dravic's character meets a tragic end when she is beheaded by Vladimir's ice skate - perhaps symbolising that those who seek "Erotic Socialism" will always be struck down, with Dravic's character suffering an unfortunate end much in the way Willhelm Reich was imprisoned in real life, where he eventually died, for his radical beliefs.