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Golem
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - Second Run Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th March 2025). |
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The Film
 Ever since the atomic cataclysm of 1941, there are have been rumors that various governments were trying to ensure survival of the species by artificial production of humans. These rumors have been unsubstantiated and were attributed to the ancient legend of the Golem, a man baked out of clay and brought to life by placing in his mouth a slip of paper with a magic spell. When ophthalmologist ? Is murdered, the residents of his building come under suspicion but the most frustrating of them is Pernat (The Story of Sin's Marek Walczewski), an engraver who has lived there a number of years but seems to have no memories beyond his immediate circumstances. Released from custody and given the hat and coat of a stranger, Pernat is shocked to cross paths with two morgue attendants moving a body that appears to be his double. Returning to his building, he discovers that his prostitute neighbor Roznya (Man of Marble's Krystyna Janda) has commandeered the victim's apartment and belongings as her own, her father Holtrum (The Scar's Mariusz Dmochowski) intimidates him into performing various tasks – including helping him haul an oven large enough to bake a human being up to his apartment – while Roznya's alcoholic brother seems to believe that Pernat is not the same man who left the previous day... well, he is not the only one. There is also the archivist father (Man of Marble's Wieslaw Drzewicz) of shopkeeper Miriam (Camouflage's Joanna Zólkowska) who fixes dolls in her free time. Miriam's father calls Pernat an empty clay shell who has no existence among the records of those living or dead as confirmed more officially by his police interrogator (Camera Buff's Boguslaw Sobczuk) when he stumbles upon another murder. Elsewhere, a group of scientists debate whether to recapture or observe an inferior copy of one of their experiments that was accidentally released through a clerical error. Based on a novel by Gustav Meyrink previously adapted for French television in 1967, Piotr Szulkin's feature debut Golem's literary source predates the works of Kafka while the film itself predates Blade Runner but not its literary source, ideas of which might have funneled their way into the adaptation as Szulkin and critic Tadeusz Sobolewski wrestled with a work more mystical than scientific (Pernat is working on an engraving of the Tarot figure of "The Hanged Man" which has introspectiveness among its interpretations). Since it does predate Kafka, the encounters and examinations to which Pernat is subjected could be interpreted beyond obscure methods of social control to more explicitly as tests of his health, intelligence, and dexterity – with the physical attributes of more concern to Holtrum for reasons later disclosed – as the scientists discussing what to do with him manage to maintain surveillance on him even when he appears to be at his most solitary. Whereas the Ridley Scott film foregrounded the action while exploring what it means to be human – and the intimation that its protagonist might also be a replicant – Szulkin seems uninterested in such questions or even whether Pernat is Pernat. Iis far more of a mystery as to whether Roznya and her brother are golems or humans as she reveals that her father is more interested in Pernat than herself or her brother because they are "faulty" (which could refer to their failings as humans or as creations from his oven). Pernat simply is the Golem, or a copy of one – we actually see him shedding a layer of skin off his face and head – the reduced awareness of which makes him the stand-in for the viewer casting fresh eyes on Szulkin's pessimistic view of society in which Golems might actually outnumber humans. The murder of the doctor seems to be forgotten about just a third of the way into the film as a sort of McGuffin, but there are clues to that culprit while even having Pernat apprehended for that other character's murder may simply be another means of detaining him for more observation. Szulkin's image of a dystopian society eschews futuristic devices, with the most overt weapon of control being the image. The town's sole cinema shows pornography but the ads that play in between films lull the audience to sleep before the action – yet Pernat and Roznya still see cinema as a means of escape – while the illusion of a crowded rock concert is revealed to Pernat to be a "visual mixing" of a lone singer and separate video of a crowd, highlighting the way media can manipulate perception to the point where we question go beyond questioning who is human and who is a golem to who is even real and seemingly the only way to escape the burden of these questions is to "fall into line" with the endless drills being conducted out in the streets. Walczewski strikes a balance between being a blank slate and demonstrating his character's struggle to relate to others while Janda was not alien to roles in which she embodied part or all of a feminine dichotomy, and her prostitute Roznya is simultaneously less showy than her heartbreaking actress in On the Silver Globe and but her vulnerabilities and strengths are more understated than her embattled cabaret performer in Interrogation and she is able to make a small part suddenly more substantial in a single scene. Jan Nowicki (The Hourglass Sanatorium). Szulkin's subsequent science fiction social commentaries were more ambitious, requiring more creativity with equally restrictive budgets. 
Video
Little seen in the West outside of repertory screenings, Golem has been available on English-friendly DVD as Polish import featuring a non-anamorphic letterboxed transfer but fortunately was subsequently remastered in high definition and became more easily accessible stateside in Vinegar Syndrome's Piotr Szulkin's Apocalypse Tetralogy with three more of his science fiction works O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, The War of the Worlds: Next Century, and Ga-Ga: Glory to the Heroes. In the U.K., the latter three were released in the set by Radiance Films – with individual standard editions more recently – while Second Run got Golem as reviewed here. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer comes from the same-supplied master but we have no idea if any additional work was done. The film's lighting is extremely stylized so that is not a green tinge to the grading but entirely an effect of the lighting gels (visually, the film anticipates less Blade Runner and more The Element of Crime albeit with its visuals achieved in the studio through more conventional means, and skin tones are so fair (and possibly made more so with make-up) that the pallor of the actors can take on the color cast of the gel lighting. Fine detail is occasionally subject to the lighting but a few extreme close-ups are almost tactile in their textures and the skin-shedding sequence is uncomfortable to watch brief as it is and how modest the special effects. 
Audio
The LPCM 2.0 mono Polish track is clean with some eerie silences, piercing noises, and unpredictable interjections of film score. The optional English subtitles are free of any glaring errors. 
Extras
The Vinegar Syndrome release featured a commentary track by Samm Deighan while the Second Run has an audio commentary by film historian Michael Brooke – who had provided a commentary track for The War of the Worlds: Next Century in the Vinegar Syndrome set and O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization in the Radiance set – in which he notes that the opening credits attribute the film's source to both the novel and the myth and that it is not a conventional adaptation of an "impossible to read" book in which Sobolewski's responsibility as credited writer was to break down each chapter for Szulkin, and that the novel was set in Prague but the the film has the plausible deniability of being set in a more decadent Western country rather than Poland while also possessing nonverbal references to the source's Jewishness. Brooke discusses the differences between the novel and the film, and also suggests that the film actually has more in common with Terry Gilliam's later Brazil than Blade Runner. The disc also includes four short films in "One, Two, Three [Raz, dwa, trzy]" (7:16), "Everything [Wszystko]" (6:59), "A Sketch in Six Parts [Szkic do sześclu części]" (12:58), and "Copyright Film Polski MCMLXXVI" (4:12), the latter supplemented by an annotated script/ctoryboard. 
Packaging
Housed with the disc is a 20-page booklet featuring essays by Tomasz Kolankiewicz and Michał Oleszczyk, the former discussing Szulkin's education and early career, and likening Meyrink's novel which was highly-praised by H.P. Lovecraft while Oleszczyk refers to Szulkin as the "undiscovered Fritz Lang of 1980s Mitteleuropa while also noting the director's irritation at being considered by the critics to be a mere "sci-fi filmmaker" instead defining his works as "asocial fiction." 
Overall
Piotr Szulkin's Golem is an even more idiosyncratic treatment of the myth than the film's "impossible to read" literary source.
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