GOLEM (1980) – This science fiction film set in a post-World War Three dictatorship was made in Poland by director Piotr Szulkin and starred Marek Walczewski & Krystyna Janda. It uses the concept of a Golem as an allegory for the creation of artificial humans and examines the motives of those who would do the creating.
Golem is a challenging movie that plays like Eraserhead crossed with the Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner or even Kafka. The main character is Pernat (Walczewski), a meek and not too bright man among the struggling lower class in the oppressive dictatorship that has emerged following the nuclear war.
The low budget limits the film’s depiction of this post-apocalypse dystopia to a claustrophobic ghetto environment rather than sweeping vistas of ruined buildings or vast wastelands. Most of the story is set in Pernat’s apartment slums or at the local police station.
When we first meet Pernat, who has a kind of “Phil Collins in Buster” look, he is being interrogated about a murder committed in his apartment block. We observe how easily subdued and fairly lacking in intelligence he is, but ultimately the authorities release him because they don’t have enough evidence and he is just one of the suspects.
While timidly taking his leave of the police station, he notices a dead body being wheeled to the morgue and gets enough of a fleeting glimpse to realize the corpse looks just like him. Not even forceful enough to inquire about this, Pernat tries to claim his jacket and hat from the police property room but is mistaken for another person (hinting that there is yet another person who looks like him and was brought in by the police in an unrelated matter). Continue reading
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