Operation Hyacinth

It's still in the news today how badly the LGBT community can be treated in Poland, and this fact is echoed in this thriller set during the latter years of communist rule in that country (1985-7) when, apparently, a campaign was set up against the community by the authorities. Those looking for a straight forward thriller will be disappointed, as although those elements are there, and are grittily and realistically done, it seems to me that the film is a lot more to do with identity, freedom, and of course sexuality, focusing as it does on the central character, a young policeman sent by his prejudiced superiors to investigate the murder of a known gay. The end result is a drama on many levels which some might feel is heavy handed, but which I found quite absorbing.

I remember meeting some Polish guys in London by chance in the very early 70s. I was astonished and asked them how they had got out. They laughed and told me that Poland had liberal policies for allowing tourists to the West. I think that chance meeting closed my eyes to the true horror of the Stalinist state that Poland really was and which is portrayed unflinchingly in the film.

Suspects get beaten up, arrested wrongfully, forced to confess. But lets not go to far overboard on this. It was happening in France, the US, the UK too. As in the film, public lavatories were raided by cops in the UK as well. Lives were ruined.

Robert, the son of a Secret Service colonel, has a sense of morality and open mindedness. When he and his colleague are tasked with finding the murderer of a prominent closeted gay man, he thinks naively that they will be properly investigating. He should have realised that by he and his partner being given the case instead of the murder squad that there were plots within plots.

Unsatisfied by the culmination of the case, he strikes out on his own to find a web of corruption that extends right to the top. During this personal inquiry, he discovers himself and his true desires.

Desperate danger arrives for him and the new friends he has made and he makes his personal, political, moral and professional choice during an award ceremony for having "solved" the original murder. In the final scene, we are left hoping against hope that he can keep the promise that he made to Arek.

The period details of this film were perfect. I loved the music being played in the bars and formal dinners, so incredibly old-fashioned compared to the West. The clothes and the filming locations were perfect. A true-to-life detail was that everyone smoked. Virtually every scene had people lighting up.

Tension was held through the whole of the running time of one hour and fifty minutes. There wasn't a minute I was tempted to look at my watch or phone. I highly recommend this film.

!980's Poland. The cracks in the repressive system are showing everywhere. This is a time when Solidarity, the trade union becomes a force to reckon with. The era of ideals has long gone, nobody believes in the Communist "paradise", least of all communists themselves. All that's left is naked repression. And they certainly knew how to repress. Among many other monstrous ideas was to make list of known homosexuals and force them into collaboration. "Operation Hyacinth" is an impeccably done film-noir. The set-up might be quite familiar, lone wolf policeman fighting for justice, but this drab, gray world of the Iron Curtain Poland is starting to shift and change giving a glimpse of things to come. Long path from Communism to ultra-catholic right-wing nationalism might seem like a colossal waste of time, but the bare fact of this movie being made, shows that better things are coming. The old repression didn't win in the end, the new one will fail too. Sooner or later.

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.

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.