WR: Mysteries of the Organism

A. Mutimer

at 10:46 am

This film has had gallons of bile poured on it, by Reichians, by film makers and by many, many viewers. But I put it to you that it has been, in the main, totally misunderstood. Why?

The first reason is that in order to really understand the film you have to understand what Wilhelm Reich said, and you have to understand it in some detail. If you don’t then the entire film will appear to you to be filmatic madness. You might easily conclude that Reich was a nutter and that the Director was a nutter too. You’d be wrong. Reich, at least, was a genius. Reich’s work is very wide in scope covering psychology, physics and politics in a unique way and requires serious reading, of more than one of his books and with a studious attitude aswell.

Second, even when you get Reich under your belt, you aren’t going to understand the film unless you share the sense of humour of the director. The acted parts of the film are often ironic and and the jokes rely on an understanding of communist politics and the propagandist film making that served it. If you don’t know these you won’t be laughing when the Director hopes you will be and you will miss the show by a country mile. So again, the prerequisite background knowledge is rather high. In fact, I am not aware of a film that demands so much knowledge of the viewer if it is to be understood as it is intended.

However, if you have both of these kinds of background you will find that an otherwise nonsensical film makes perfect sense and you will find the film fascinating and probably very enjoyable.

So I suggest this approach. Watch this film without the background knowledge and enjoy the apparent insanity. But for God’s sake don’t decide it actually *is* madness. If you do the background reading and then watch it again you will see another film entirely. This was my journey with this film and it is the one and only time I have found such a massive gap between getting something and not getting something – it was, very simply, two totally different viewing experiences. Amazing.
Rating: 5 / 5