Opération Hyacinthe

At the first sigh, a film about Polish pink files under Comunist regime. In essence, just an inspired portrait of a dictatorship. Admirable work of Tomasz Zietek, precise and sublle exploration of a dark universe, good game of apparences, mix of justice spirit and love .

A well crafted film about idealism and truth, proposing not exactly, not only, a requisitorium against homophobia but a beautiful work about live in truth.

This ain't your feel-good Gay movie. This is one of our stories about our tough history. It's about a society who is locked in homophobia, to the point of seeking out the queers to criminalize them. It's well-done drama, based on the the Hyacinth Operation in Communist Poland in the 80s, rooting out queers to rat on other queers, etc.

There are some lighter parts, such as a glimpse of a clandestine queer party full of silly antics. And you do get to experience the some of queer "family" support through horrendous times. And a little bit of sex.

Definitely worth a watch. It's part of our history. (Unfortunately, it's also part of our present, given Poland's continued institutionalized homophobia).

Please watch it. It's entertaining. And it's important!

This is a really tight fact-based drama based on a true chapter from the ignominious past of communist Poland. Beautifully photographed and set in a bleak Warsaw winter. Good performances all around and a compelling narrative make this stand above gay persecution tropes that often accompany similarly themed motion pictures.

Summary

What appeared to be a Polish version of Cruising at the beginning is definitely not. It is a successful neo noir, controversial due to its subject matter for a Polish fiction, which recounts a police investigation into a period during which thousands of homosexuals and heterosexuals related to them were persecuted, mistreated, booked and sometimes compulsively detained. This is another of those films that strongly recreates that oppressive period climate, but also everyday "behind the iron curtain".

Review:

During the 1980s, while the Polish police and secret service carried out Operation or Action Jacinto, the young detective Robert (Tomasz Zietek, with an air of Polish Alain Delon) faces the investigation, as an undercover agent, of a murder in the underground gay community in Warsaw. Despite the rapid "solving" of the case under pressure from the SB (Polish intelligence and secret police, in which his own father is a colonel), Robert insists on carrying out the investigation and will do so for more than one reason.

What appeared to be a Polish version of Cruising at the beginning, is definitely not. Piotr Domalewski's film is a neo noir in which Robert's research poses challenges to the system that are later enhanced by more personal ones that are added. It is controversial for a Polish fiction to relate a police investigation referring to a period during which thousands of homosexuals were registered in a compulsive way from raids in a framework of denunciation so expensive to Stalinism and police brutality and that gave rise to all kinds of extortion. In other words, Operation Jacinto appears as the background of the investigation and not as the plot axis of the film. Perhaps for this reason, his denunciation is more powerful since he paints a whole period painting.

This is another of those films that strongly recreates that period climate "behind the iron curtain." The staging uses a photograph and a successful eighties soundtrack and the police and personal intrigues of the detective (although they contain some predictable elements) are very well concocted and carried out, supported by the acting solvency to which we are accustomed to Polish fictions.

And a fly on the wall look at how lbgtq+ where treated as criminals in communist republic of poland, it hasnt nescesarrily changed so much but it tells the harsh climate back then.

Props and production design are very good, filmographically its from the best of polish traditions, and the story and plot is extremely different from hollywoods.

So take a deep dive into the groin of polandish homophobia, its dark, wellacted and pretty groundbreaking silver screen art from east of the old iron curtain. Grumpy old man recommends.