W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism: Difference between revisions

Roughly the first third of the film consists of a pseudo-documentary about the life and work of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich; who was once an associate of Sigmund Freud. Wilhelm Reich had this theory that the essence of life consisted of sexual energy called "Orgone". He believed that diseases such as cancer were caused by an inhibited orgonalOrgonal flow, and he constructed chambers called "orgoneOrgone accumulators" that would infuse people with orgoneOrgone energy to cure them and improve their sexual potency. Originally from eastern Europe; Reich was a devoted communist who believed that the only way the USSR could achieve utopia was by advocating free sexuality, thus resulting in uninhibited orgonalOrgonal flow. Uh-huh. Reich was booted out of the USSR and he wound up in Nazi Germany, where he was booted out again to America. Here, he got persecuted as a crackpot and his books were burned. One thing that may have contributed to this could possibly be that one of his therapies involved having patients engage in orgies.

Of the numerous films of the late '60s and early '70s that positively gloried in the sexual revolution and the release of social shackles on free expression in general, ''W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism'' is one of the most ambitious, most confused, and downright weirdest. It was also one of the most controversial, its numerous nude sex scenes and frank dialog about masturbation and sexual stimulation ensuring both substantial audiences and outcries from [[Moral Guardians]]. In some ways, it's a briliantbrilliant piece of art, in others, it's an incoherent mess. In any case ''W.R.'' may be [[Overly Narrow Superlative|the only avant-garde slapstick communist documentary sex romp ever made]], and that alone makes it a must-see.

* [[Red Scare]]: AcordingAccording to this film, Reich was persecuted for this reason. (The reality was somewhat different; at the time Reich was indicted by the FDA, he was an ardent anti-communist.)