Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
WR: Mysteries Of The Organism
Collapse
X
Collapse
-
WR: Mysteries Of The Organism
Released by: Criterion Collection
Released on: 6-19-2007
Director: Dusan Makavejev
Cast: Milena Dravic, Ivica Vidovic, Jagoda Kaloper, Jackie Curtis, Tuli Kupferberg, Miodrag Andric
Year: 1971
The Movie:
Croatian filmmaker Dusan Makavejev's Wilhelm Reich inspired WR: Mysteries Of The Organism takes the philosopher's ideas - primarily that orgasms are good for your health, that fascism is a result of sexual repression and that the libido regulates the flow of mankind's sexual energy - and puts many of those idea up on screen. While Reich originally rose to prominence working alongside Sigmund Freud, as the political landscape of Europe changed in the thirties and into the forties, his theories and thesis' would become increasingly political. If you've seen Makavejev's better known Sweet Movie, you'll know that sex and politics are right up the director's alley.
The plot of the film, such as it is, mixes up footage of a singular running plot which follows two beautiful young Yugoslavian girls, one a political activist and the other a sex maniac, who get mixed up in a love affair with a Russian visiting their country to compete as a skater who just so happens to have never had an orgasm. From there, the film intercuts archival footage of Wilhelm Reich and clips showing various sexual deviants and artistic types (including Warholian hanger-oner Jackie Curtis) hanging out around the core of Manhattan, including an interesting bit involving SCREW magazine. It also interjects bits with Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs dressed as a soldier who strokes his rifle in masturbatory fashion and a scene in which an artist named Nancy Godfrey makes a plaster cast of Jim Buckley's fully erect penis.
WR: Mysteries Of The Organism was banned in Yugoslavia shortly after it was made and the director stayed out of his homeland for quite some time afterwards. The film also caused quite an uproar when it played in the United States and in England as well, and it seems that a lot of what Makavejev was trying to communicate was simply lost on an audience either unfamiliar with Reich's theories (and therefore unable to understand the way Makavejev mixed up sex and politics in this picture) or just unwilling to accept that there may be any validity to them. Underneath the sex and violence that is absolutely put into the film with the intention of shocking and titillating, however, is a pretty earnest message about the dangers of fascism and sexual hang ups and how the two relate. If you don't hold Reich's theories in any sort of regard, you probably won't agree with the points that it tries to make and it's probably really not quite as simple as saying 'the world would be a much happier place if everyone got laid as often as they'd like' but even the most puritanical right wing pundit has to agree that a healthy sex life has it's pros.
More importantly, the film also possesses a rich sense of humor. There's a playfulness to its explicitness that ensures (if we're paying attention, at least) that we see the lighter side of the plights Makavejev points out. He's poking fun at the Soviet's because they don't see the humor in things and he's poking fun at the American's because they're too damn prurient when it comes to sex for their own good. He does so with some rather abstract and almost surrealist moments, but the comedy is there and the movie is a fascinating mix of pseudo-documentary, comedy, commentary, allegory and a celebration of human sexuality.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Criterion's 1.66.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is a good one. Properly flagged for progressive scan playback, the image quality is strong throughout. There's a bit of mild print damage and some shots look grainier than others but colors are strong without looking artificially boosted and detail levels are very good. Black levels are good and while skin tones have been intentionally played with a bit here and there, sharpness and contrast look dead on. There aren't any problems at all with compression artifacts, edge enhancement or aliasing and the transfer probably looks as good as the elements could realistically allow for.
The audio quality of the Dolby Digital Mono track is fine. Some scenes are spoken rather softly but not to the point where it's really a detriment. Dialogue is generally quite well balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion to complain about and generally things sound just fine here, the score in particular has some nice resonance to it.
The first extra is a commentary track in which actor Daniel Stewart reads excerpts from Raymond Durgnat's 1999 book on this film which confirms in no uncertain terms the effect that Stalinist politics has had on Makavejev's picture. It also explains many of Reich's theories and how they clash with the fascist politics that Makavejev is lashing out against here and in some of his other films. There's the standard biographical information interspersed here, which helps us to understand Makavejev's position on things a bit better, but this track is at its best when its dissecting the many layers of the picture, which it does frequently and with refreshing honesty.
From there we move on to a pair of interviews with Makavejev, the first shot in 1972 for Danish television is a twenty-eight minute segment in which the director speaks, in English, about how he worked Reich's ideas into this picture. The commentary covers a fair bit of the same ground but it's interesting here to get to hear Makavejev explain things in his own words. The second interview is a twenty-nine minute interview shot in 2006 where Peter Cowie basically interviews Makavejev about his film. This provides a retrospective look back at the film, its history, and its influence and it allows its creator to look back on it from a more modern perspective.
The disc also includes two BBC related extras, the first of which is a five minute bit with Cowie and Makavejev in which they discuss how the BBC requested that the director make an 'improved version' of the film for broadcast - clips with digital censoring show how ridiculous it would be to try to make this film fit into that sanitized mold. The second BBC related extra is a documentary that Makavejev produced in 1994 called Hole In The Soul, which is a strange fifty-two minute autobiographical piece which he narrates. It's interesting in that it covers some of the controversy he's found himself wrapped up in over the years and uses pertinent clips to explain some of these issues.
Also included inside the keepcase is a full color booklet containing disc and film credits as well as an enlightening essay from Jonathan Rosenbaum entitled WR, Sex And The Art Of Radical Juxtaposition which sheds some welcome contextual information on many of the film's themes and ideas.
The Final Word:
Criterion has provided an exceptional package for a truly unique piece of work. As thought provoking and incredibly well made as WR: Mysteries Of The Organism is, it's certainly not a film for everyone but those with an interest in the correlation of sex and politics as they relate to artistic expression and personal freedom will certainly appreciate Dusan Makavejev efforts and this extras laden DVD is the right way to do that.Posting comments is disabled.
Categories
Collapse
article_tags
Collapse
- album review (218)
- album reviews (274)
- arrow video (272)
- blu-ray (3225)
- blu-ray review (4162)
- comic books (1392)
- comic reviews (872)
- comics (988)
- dark horse comics (484)
- dvd and blu-ray reviews a-f (1969)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews G-M (1711)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews N-S (1757)
- DVD And Blu-ray Reviews T-Z (878)
- dvd review (2513)
- idw publishing (216)
- image comics (207)
- kino lorber (391)
- movie news (260)
- review (318)
- scream factory (279)
- severin films (300)
- shout! factory (537)
- twilight time (269)
- twilight time releasing (231)
- vinegar syndrome (497)
Latest Articles
Collapse
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: February 22nd, 2022.
Director: Gianfranco Parolini
Cast: Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance
Year: 1976
Purchase From Amazon
God’s Gun – Movie Review:
Directed by Gianfranco Parolini in 1976, quite late in the spaghetti western boom years, God's Gun (Diamante Lobo in Italy) introduces us to a bad, bad man named Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) who, along with his gang of equally bad, bad men, start wreaking...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:10 PM -
-
Released by: Kino Lorber
Released on: October 8th, 2019.
Director: Mario Bava
Cast: Christopher Lee, Reg Park, Leonora Ruffo, Gaia Germani
Year: 1968
Purchase From Amazon
Hercules In The Haunted World – Movie Review:
Directed by Mario Bava in 1961 and featuring a screenplay by Bava (and Sandro Continenza, Francesco Prosperi and Duccio Tessari), Hercules In The Haunted World (also known as Hercules At The Center Of The Earth and...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 12:08 PM -
-
Released by: Radiance Films
Released on: April 20th, 2024.
Director: Noburo Nakamura
Cast: Miyuki Kuwano, Mikijiro Hira
Year: 1964
Purchase From Amazon
The Shape Of Night – Movie Review:
Directed by Noburo Nakamura for Shochiko in 1964, ‘The Shape Of Night’ follows a young woman named Yoshie Nomoto (Miyuki Kuwano). In the opening scene, she’s working as a streetwalker on the outskirts of town and soon enough, she’s picked...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:26 AM -
-
Released by: Film Masters
Released on: April 23rd, 2024.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Richard Carlson, Juli Reding, Lugene Sanders, Susan Gordon
Year: 1963
Purchase From Amazon
Tormented – Movie Review:
The late Bert I. Gordon’s 1963 horror film, ‘Tormented,’ is an effectively spooky ghost story made with an obviously low budget but no less effective for it.
The story revolves around a professional piano player...-
Channel: Movies
04-17-2024, 10:19 AM -
-
Released by: Grindhouse Releasing
Released on: March 12th, 2024.
Director: William Grefé
Cast: William Shatner, Jennifer Bishop, Ruth Roman, Harold Sakata
Year: 1974
Purchase From Amazon
Impulse – Movie Review:
Directed by the one and only William Grefé, 1974’s Impulse is one of those rare films that allows you to witness what it would be like if a really sweaty William Shatner got mad at a lady carrying balloons. Before that...-
Channel: Movies
04-15-2024, 01:20 PM -
-
Released by: Severin Films
Released on: April 30th, 2024.
Director: Andrew Legge
Cast: Emma Appleton, Stefanie Martini, Rory Fleck Byrne
Year: 2022
Purchase From Amazon
Lola – Movie Review:
Irish filmmakers Andrew Legge’s 2022 movie, ‘Lola’, which was made during Covid-19 lockdowns, is a wildly creative movie made in the found footage style that defies expectations, provides plenty of food for thought and manages to make...-
Channel: Movies
04-10-2024, 04:09 PM -