JUMP CUT
A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA


The film WR: Mysteries of the Organism announces its archival endeavors though this image, suggesting sifting through and selecting materials.	Archival work resurrects lost items and the motif of raising the discarded and forgotten is also evoked in this image from Sweet Movie…	Likewise, Izabela’s body is raised from its tomb in Love Affair…

Visual echoes abound in WR: Mysteries of the Organism. In this archival footage a patient is given shock therapy…	…which is linked with the primal scream therapy administered in this scene…	Releasing a primal scream is utilized as a way to connect with life-affirmative urges such as sexual health.

This shot of Vladimir Ilyich, a sexually-repressed Soviet ice skater, comments ironically on the previous image. The composition further links him with his namesake, depicted on the wall behind him.	Vladimir lectures on the respective benefits of the communist and capitalist world, utilizing a picture to illustrate his point.	This lesson is explicated in the New York City documentary sequence that immediately precedes it…

Framed pictures and posters are recurring motifs in this passage of the film, such as this image of Hitler surrounded by women and a mysterious sexual energy…	Vladimir soon finds himself in a similar position between Milena and Jagoda…	Milena tries to frame herself, hoping to capture her own sexual energy…

…just as Jackie Curtis shows off his/her favorite image of captured sexuality…	The film WR: Mysteries of the Organism ends on this vision of surreal framing. Milena’s severed head is merged with a picture of Wilhelm Reich, commenting on the alternating dangers of sexual inhibition and release.	Sweet Movie tends to juxtapose liquids, solids, and other objects of consumption (or potential consumption) in a transformative manner. This image of Mr. Dollars’ golden penis (and urine)…

…becomes the torrential waters of Niagara Falls in the subsequent shot.	This image of red wax, meant to symbolize the spilt blood of the murdered Polish officers in the Katyn Forest massacre…	…is transformed into an object of beauty…

…but with a caveat.	The dead are reanimated…	…and become the living, who promptly die again.

The cycle of life continues in Sweet Movie. In this image adolescent children are nursed…	…just as an adult woman is nursed out of her comatose state.	Many suffer from infantile regression in the film.

This regression is relieved with therapeutic means.	Sometimes it is expunged…	Yet somehow, life always prevails.