The Golden Glove opens in a cramped, unkempt version of hell. On every surface are dust, grime, and smears of unknown origin. On the ground are dirty clothes and age-old stains. The walls are plastered with torn and faded pornographic pictures. The ceiling is a shade too low and shade too suffocating. A disheveled bed can be seen through a narrow doorway with curtains for a screen. Atop the bed and confronting the viewer is the half-naked backside of an extraordinarily large woman, crumpled in a heap and unmoving. Scurrying about all of this is a rat of a man, hunched over and anxiously attending to a task. We hear him crash about the kitchen, and then assault the lifeless woman with cord and a tarp, intending to wrap her up. Moments later, he drags her mummified figure out of the apartment and into the hallway, then down a flight of stairs that betrays equal measures of disarray. The man pauses for a second to catch his breath and we catch a glimpse of his blazing wild eyes and mutilated portrait. Fritz Honka strikes fear into our hearts.
It’s an opening sequence that, for all its dissimilarities, reminds one of Hitchcock’s Rear Window in structure. In just few minutes and without any discernible dialogue, the audience learns all relevant information about the main character’s state and nature. There is certainly no unnecessary exposition. Almost immediately, we forget the cozy chairs we sit in and the air-conditioned room around us and find ourselves transported to Honka’s rancid, disgusting flat in the creaking attic of a run-down apartment building swallowed up by the uneasy, oppressive air of Hamburg’s red-light district in the 1970s. It is that uneasiness that director Fatih Akin seizes on in The Golden Glove, and it is one of the movie’s best qualities.
The film is a documentary of sorts, depicting five years in the life of actual serial killer Fritz Honka. It spares no detail, delving into all the bleak, depressing, and especially grotesque subtleties of the rat man’s existence. It’s fraught with unbearable gore, gut-wrenching evil, and occasional splashes of excessively dark humor that riddle one with a mixture of guilt and disgust. It’s very well done technically. All the necessary aspects are there, including visceral sound effects, witty dialogue, and near-perfect set design. But Akin shows true mastery of the craft in his creative staging and well-timed camera movements reminiscent of Edgar Wright. Indeed, creativity is perhaps the film’s greatest virtue. From its mise-en-scène to its quiet messages on current events, The Golden Glove never settles for lazy convention. It innovates constantly to horrifying effect.
That is not to say that The Golden Glove is perfect. There is much about the film that seems empty. In the absence of an overbearing theme, we are often left purely with perversion. Much of the film’s runtime seems dedicated solely to testing its audience’s ability to keep watching. At the same time, Akin includes a handful of narrative tangents that add little to the dreary mood and spends a few moments too long on scenes that are rather annoyingly repetitive. For better or for worse, the movie is paced extremely slow.
However, its end result is still quite impressive. It treats viewers to good directing and some wonderful acting. It horrifies, disgusts, and entertains. It plays with one’s emotions and frustrates one with purpose. It’s not a movie you’ll rewatch quickly, but it’s also not one you’ll forget soon.
3/5 STARS