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.
