Psychic Comedy

By * J.C.

Yugoslav Film Maker Dusan Makavejev first discovered the work of Psychologist Wilhelm Reich some 20 years ago as a student at the University of Belgrade. Reich exerted a considerable influence on Makavejev, who was especially fascinated with the psychologist's attempts--most notably in the book Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis --to synthesize the doctrines of Marx and Freud. Makavejev's new film WR --Mysteries of the Organism is part biography, part documentary on Reichian therapy, part fable and part essay, an altogether improbable but successful collection of episodes. It is also satanically funny.

Reich held that political systems were repressive because people were not psychologically liberated. This liberation could be achieved only through the massive release of psychic tensions by orgasm. Makavejev takes these ideas and wryly applies them to both Communism and capitalism.

Plaster Casting. For example, there is the pretty Reich devotee in Yugoslavia who preaches sexual and political liberation to her rigid Russian boy friend. A star of the Russian ice follies ("Real socialist art!" someone comments), he resists all her ideas for a while but finally relents and makes love to her. The Communist, however, cannot tolerate his liberation, and he decapitates the girl with his ice skate.

In America, according to Makavejev, "there is no sexual revolution, only more freedom." He illustrates his point with several absurd manifestations of this freedom, including a sequence showing an editor of Screw having his vitals cast in plaster and several delirious soliloquies by a transvestite Warhol superstar. There is also the spectacle of Fug Rock Group Member Tuli Kupferberg stalking the streets in an absurd orange army uniform, stroking his combat rifle and grinning demoniacally as his fellow Fugs sing Kill for Peace.

All of this is interwoven with documentary sequences of patients undergoing Reichian therapy, filmed interviews with Reichian adherents, bits of cinematic pornography and glimpses of Reich himself in his later years, when, it is strongly suggested, he was lapsing into paranoia.

Although Makavejev insists that he has "warm feelings" about Reich, WR -- Mysteries of the Organism has so enraged some Reichians that they sought (unsuccessfully) to get an injunction against its showing. The film is indeed liable to offend, confound or confuse a good many other people, who should not, however, deny themselves the experience of seeing it.

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