German Crime Story: Gefesselt

Raik Doormann lives a middle-class life with his wife and son in a housing estate on the northeastern edge of Hamburg. In his typical German row house, the viewer is led deeper and deeper into the abysses. Both into those of Doormann's soul and into the depths of his house. There he has built himself a nuclear shelter, which he uses for his cruel deeds.

The focus is on the cruel manipulative character of Raik Doormann, who has an extreme sadomasochistic tendency and is also a chauvinistic narcissist. Oliver Masucci gives the character of Doormann an eerie voice that makes the character's sayings seem even more repulsive. Sometimes purringly seductive, sometimes with a distinctly Hanseatic twang. But again and again he strives to seem chummy and jovial, as if seeking the applause of other misogynists. He even admits to small weaknesses, such as his sadomasochistic tendencies. But all this is just a clever red herring to distract from his gruesome murders. Fortunately, there is hardly any explanatory psychoanalysis of his character in the plot. The viewer is allowed to make up his own mind. Oliver Masucci embodies the sleazy codger in an extremely convincing manner, and the rest of the cast delivers equally credible performances.

This character is both a figure of fascination and a sausage. It is above all the presence and acting talent of Oliver Masucci that captivate one. The character's behavior, on the other hand, with its manipulative lies, egocentric excuses and barbaric deeds, is brazen and perfidious.

In addition to all the torture agonies, the bad treatment of men with women is also in the foreground here. When a victim is paraded, laughed at and ridiculed during the trial, Doormann directly addresses his victim and claims that it was all consensual and that the victim wanted it that way, it sticks in your throat. When Doormann asks the question "Is being a woman like being handicapped?", one feels as a viewer for this man only disgust, disgust and definitely also the urge to shout out loud against this attitude of contempt for women.

The empathy-less man-catcher is contrasted with a young female inspector. Nela Langenbeck (Angelina Häntsch) is a commissioner with the Hamburg police and fights not only against crime, but also against the misogynistic structures of the police apparatus of the 1990s. Commissioner Nela Langenbeck's work environment is toxic and it takes her a long time to find support. She is the only one who listens to the victim and does everything in her power to get him behind bars. In order to expose the mask of the petty bourgeois filous to this supposedly harmless muzzler, it is inevitable to see the horror and the disgusting images. Both dramaturgically and cinematically, "Gefesselt" is on an outstanding level and doesn't need to hide behind "Dahmer". Despite the familiar outcome, the series succeeds in captivating the viewer throughout the entire six episodes.

The narrative structure in different time levels, I felt partly not so happily chosen. The artistic stylistic devices, for example the yellowish color filter, which always provides a certain retro look and equally uneasiness, is not new, but achieves the desired result. The ever-present uncomfortableness and distastefulness that keeps the viewer from any smiles here. The settings of the series are based on the 80s and seem intentionally monotonous. Dramaturgically, "Tied Up" does everything right. There are many subtle messages cleverly woven into the narrative. With the decline of the furrier's trade, a piece of Doormann's traditional masculinity is also lost. Even the former eroticism of the furs no longer catches on. Doormann is a discontinued model. In the first episode, his son asks, "Does only Mom earn the money now?" Promptly after, Elke Berger is put on the hook and Doormann hopes for the big bucks. It is no coincidence that he has chosen a prostitute (Nina Gnädig) as his partner, with whom he wants to escape to Costa Rica. Power, money and sex are his elixir of life.

------------- Conclusion: Worth seeing - Thanks to an excellent production and a great acting performance, the portrayal of this monster captivates the viewer until the last minute and appeals not only to crime fans. A pull that I could not escape.