Imagine the Al Pacino film Cruising but without the homophobia or the comforting heterosexist ending. Operation Hyacinth, based on real events in Poland, is that film. It tells the very real story, a story that has played itself out in most of the world, of state persecution and violence directed towards queer men, and makes it finally no about the other, but from the point of view of someone personal.
What ends up being fascinating about Hyacinth is how it explores its lead character's flowering, his discovering that he may have more to his passions that he imagined, or that his repressive culture allows. This is a story that has played out in western culture again and again, but what makes this movie work is how it eschews the idea of a straight saviour taking pity on the poor homosexuals and has a man find out that there is more to him than he thought. He isn't necessarily a gay man, perhaps his love for his fiancee is real, but he also finds the ability to love, lust after, and connect with, a man as well and embraces that he too is one of the other.
The film succeeds by putting its audience there too. It is at its heart a crime story, a good cop against the corrupt system movie, and it forces the audience into his point of view, the queer point of view.
Unfortunately it is a story that likely it repeating today, making this movie even more powerful.
Operation Hyacinth
Starring: Tomasz Ziętek
Director: Piotr Domalewski
Writer: Marcin Ciaston
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