Golem

Immersed in a world of green aesthetics, Piotr Szulkin invites us into a dystopian future where eugenics programs are being implemented.

Its cinematography, consisting of mostly green and sometimes yellow, adds an aura of surreality to the events depicted in the movie. There's also a grime appearance to further its claustrophobic sensation. From Pernat's apartment to the aisles of the building he lives in, the walls are always effacing dust and the corroding passing of time. Manifestations of a dystopian reality where the good times are but memories of a past that no longer exist.

The story follows a man named Pernat, a subject of said experiments to create a better human species. Right from the start, the movie offers us images of white lab rats intersected with doctors. Images that reinforce the nightmarish post-apocalyptic reality of the movie. Inspired by Jewish folklore as well as the novel "The Golem" from 1915 by Gustav Meyrink, the directorial debut of Piotr Szulkin could be interpreted in many ways given its symbolism. Pernat, the golem, could be seen as a villain or as a victim of extrinsic forces whose resemblance to totalitarianism, and its aim at global dominance, is no coincidence. By reason of the matter at hand, Golem is closely related to A Clockwork Orange (1973) from Stanley Kubrick, where Alex DeLarge has to be reformed due to his ultraviolence. It is clear the movie is asking us not only to think if change is possible and what does it mean to have an identity or an existence as a being, but also to examine many institutions of society where, under a veil of good intentions, nothing is found but mechanisms of coercion.

This Polish film looks nice. The use of color filters offers a standout look. Much of the film is bathed in yellow and red light. The look reminds me a little of the Russian science fiction films Letters from a Dead Man and Stalker. The latter is particularly noteworthy since director Piotr Szulkin clearly admires Andrei Tarkovsky. Unfortunately, this variation on the golem story is a slog to watch.

The confusing plot begins with the protagonist, Pernat, at a police station being interrogated about a murdered neighbor who lived in the same apartment building. Pernat seems confused about much of his past but because there is no evidence the police free the man. However, when he goes to collect his personal effects, he is given someone else's hat and coat by the unconcerned clerk. When Pernat returns home, the viewer is introduced to the other people who live in the building. They are all eccentrics. The rest of the film has the hero bouncing from one tenant to the next, finding all social relations difficult. Every now and then, the story is interrupted by a group of scientists discussing a project that went wrong. That is about it for plot. The viewer waits for something more sinister to develop, and waits, and waits. . . .

Almost nothing happens in this film. The director shows his various influences, Franz Kafka, Andrei Tarkovsky, the Tarot deck, and the legend of the golem, but the director fails to tell a coherent story. Sure, the film looks nice. Too bad it does not go anywhere.

As the opening credits and the title reveal, Piotr Szulkin's debut proper, following a series of experimental shorts and TV work, is a retelling of Gustav Meyrink's classic story of the Golem, a clay figure magically animated by a rabbi to protect a Jewish community somewhere in Germany. Szulkin emphasizes the prophetic nature of the story by transposing it somewhere in the near future, with scientists experimenting with eugenics to create a new race of superhumans after witnessing the devastating effects of a nuclear war.

Unlike Paul Wagener's automaton-with-a-heart from his silent classic of German expressionism, Szulkin's golem is a common man in appearance and more human than the actual humans in heart and soul. His name is Pernat and he's a copper craftsman living in a shabby apartment block. The first scene finds him interrogated for the murder of a doctor that lived in a nearby apartment, a murder he knows nothing about. The nightmarish, claustrophobic mood established by this early scene that seems to recall Kafka's THE TRIAL is sustained throughout, embedded from all sides with surrealism, dark humour, social commentary and general absurdity.

A great example of the socially-minded dark surrealism Szulkin goes for is a scene where Pernat, our golem, is invited into a cinema by the cranky old father of a girl he meets, or as he calls it the Church of Transfiguration. Once inside Pernat witnesses the projection of a commercial, sung by children voices to the tune of the Christmas carol, advertising sleeping pills (called 'Happy Dorm' - "sleep from night to morning is what Happy Dorm will bring")! The commercial follows a particularly creepy second one advertising plastic surgery. As all this is happening the father who is sitting next to him is dozing off. He then walks to the toilet (which is plastered with posters portraying FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLF MAN and PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES) and removes his own face, while the cleaning lady is slamming on the door.

Later on, another character rants on about the voyeurism of theater audiences, how they watch movies for sentimentality and schmaltz, so they can feel themselves more human compared to the characters on screen. What may sound as the disillusioned preaching of an avant-garde director speaking through his own characters, bears relevance to the larger frame of the movie. As one of the scientists who created Pernat replies to the question of another: "what makes you so sure (Pernat) is human?".

Filmed around a shabby apartment block in dark orange hues, like the sepia tinting of a silent film, GOLEM works more often than not, has a point to get across, and in the same time marks Szulkin as a visionary auteur in his own right. His later sci-fi movies were more playfull and inventive (no doubt helped by significantly higher budgets), but the social commentary, satiric approach and black humour are constants in his work. From the claustrophobic opening to the enigmatic ending, with its kafkaesque ambiance and small tributes to other films (THE TRIAL, BRAZIL, INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and possibly CITIZEN KANE in the end-credits scene), GOLEM is worth your time.

I just saw Golem which was part of the Sci-Fi London 2010 line-up. It was a total disappointment.

The first review explains it as "Kafkaesque claustrophobia meets surrealism in a sci-fi retelling". What this really means is a movie that will make no sense, is full of absurd dialogue and situations and will end up wasting 92 minutes of your life.

Everyone in the film acted like morons, so the attempt by the Government to create super humans appears to have failed miserably.

As Sci-Fi it failed, and as social commentary; the message seems to have been lost in the telling.

I've ought confess pick up a movie from Iron Curtain I'd always be with a foot behind, often those filmmakers used to offered to us something unusual on purpose using metalinguistic aiming for puzzle the audience, in a dystopian world post nuclear war, on replacing human being process, allied a surrealist narrative letting the viewers in deep despair, a true hard endurance test without any reward at sight based on the silence classic.

The high point quite sure is the visual aesthetic mixing green, red and yellow filters according the preposition setting whereby the director Piotr Szulkin wisely implied in those sequences at bleak environment over a gloomy building, also many oddities as dolls, box, flower, wood chisel and so for, all this alternate by some scientists arguing about a failure process among others further rulings at high circles of government.

Anyway it wasn't addressed for any taste whatsoever, at the extent of to take the unaware viewers to depletion over so weirdo offering, a really tiresome experience for large majority of science-fiction enthusiasts, it just ingestible once in a while and so, however if you have sins to pay afterlife it certainly will relief your chastisement when you meet the mighty at heaven.

Thanks for reading.

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First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 5.