It seems like so many countries have undergone a dark period in their history when they undertook merciless witch-hunts against the LGBTQ population. In the US it started in 1953 under Eisenhower, and what became known as The Lavendar Scare lasted some four decades. In that period thousands of people lost their livelihoods and were made outcasts by their families and far too often ended up taking their own lives.
In Poland, the communist police drove the LGBTQ community underground when they started a secret mass operation to create a national database of all Polish queers. From 1985 -1987 some 11,000 people were forcibly documented and made to sign statements that they were gay which completely ruin lives. It was called Operation Hyacinth and it may have long ceased BUT the records remain intact somewhere with the Polish Authorities refusing to destroy them.
This particularly witch hunt is the setting for a new excellent queer thriller. Award-winning Polish filmmaker Piotr Domalewski captures the bleak grimy despair of Warsaw in this story of Robert (Tomasz Zietek) an ambitious young sergeant in the militia police who is right in the middle of this vicious clampdown. But this will also not end well for him too, and his undoing is that he is always trying too hard to please everyone in his life.
He lives in a wing of his parent’s apartment under the watchful eye of his father Edward (Marek Kalita) a powerful Colonel in the Police Force who has great plans for his son. Robert’s policewoman fiance Halinka (Adrianna Chlebicka) is anxious to get him to the altar as soon as possible but the young cop is oblivious to her pressure.
Then when a wealthy gay man is murdered there is pressure on Robert and his partner to quickly solve the crime even it means beating up an innocent man to sign a confession. This doesn’t sit too well with Robert who wants to have a real investigation whilst the rest of the Force are happy to be part of Operation Hyacinth, raiding public restrooms and clubs just to round up more gay men to torture.
When there is a second murder the authorities don’t want to acknowledge they are dealing with a serial killer and want the case closed even if it means condemning yet another man. By Robert is getting more suspicious that there is a major conspiracy/cover-up. Somehow he gets permission to go undercover to satisfy his own suspicions but he is totally unprepared as to where this will lead to.
Robert befriends Arek (Hubert Milkowski) a young gay college student who unsuspectingly introduces him to his inner underground circle of queer friends. What Robert doesn’t expect at all is that this unleashes his own latent queerness with very unexpected consequences.
Domalewski and his scriptwriter Marcin Ciaston do not disappoint. Unlike the police authorities in the story, they are in no rush to make a contrived ending, and they maintain a perfect pace to keep us so completely engaged until the final credits roll.
Kudos to the remarkably talented Zietek for his finely nuanced performance that was so convincingly authentic. Plus also a big shout to cinematographer Piotr Sobocinski Jr. for creating a rather surreal dismal-looking Warsaw that was so very spot on.
LGBTQ+ thrillers are a rare genre and we see far too few ….. as can be said about Polish queer films …. there should be so much more of them if they are all as excellent as this one
Operation Hyacinth is screening on Netflix
PS You may also like to check out:
https:// queerguru.com/the-lavender-scare/
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