OR maybe it is about “flowers”, with pansy still lingering as code for the kind of men that social institutions were (are) always wary of—homosexuals?
It is the mid-’80s in Poland, and the AIDS scare is on. As with all diseases that rage across communities, the issue is not only about contamination but more about the contaminant. A plague needs escape goats and gay communities are once more the easy target, the object of blame. This is one of the alleged reasons why a widespread operation done in clandestine manner is being conducted by the police of Poland.
There are other reasons proposed, like prostitution that the government feels is rampant among homosexuals, never mind if sex as a commodity is always there among heterosexuals.
From prostitution, it is a smooth jump into investigating drug use and then to crime alleged to be committed by or related to homosexual activities.
In historical records, the arrests happened around 1985 to 1988. The persecution bore down on individuals who were asked to confess, supply information and divulge their own network of friends and acquaintances. The government needed to come up with a database that would pinpoint without fail who were these “men” and, sometimes, “women”.
We know what happens when a registration of this nature is accomplished: an institution has “proof” dangling above certain personalities in society. Blackmail and more repression are the natural, vile results.
While there are no official reports on what happened to those whose names became part of this official directory, it was said that many had to leave the country for fear that they would be subjected to more repression.
Now, here is this film, titled Operation Hyacinth, which deals with the dark ages for gender, sexuality, and freedom in a part of Europe. What used to be a secret is now an open book for all those who cherish their identities and what they—especially in what we assume to be a greatly evolved European society—thought could never be effective in modern times. This was not the 1920s or the 1930s; this was not even centuries ago. The event chronicled took place from the mid-1980s to the end of the decade. Talk of underdevelopment of social mores!
It was reported that those who were arrested were asked to sign documents that officially marked their sexual proclivities as part of a dossier. Where the person would not admit to being gay, he was compelled to name individuals who he knew were homosexuals or solicited from him or from other males sexual services.
No gay rights activism worked while the operations went on unabated.
The principle of form following content is an achieved masterpiece in this film that presently preserves for the world the fact that repression and control are organic to the state. Gloom and doom occupy and inform Operation Hyacinth. A foreboding is there at each turn, bringing the viewer to those moments when anyone could be arrested and interrogated, and forever marked.
An elegant film noir, the film opens with a murder and a young officer, Robert, who goes undercover to find out more about the crime. Robert happens to be the son of a ranking officer in the police force. He has not only his person to uphold but also the family honor to protect. He is up for promotion and his father always reminds him not to overthink too much about principles and moral crusades. His duty, as his father warns, is to identify this serial killer and that is that.
Robert is about to marry his girlfriend who is also in the police force, as a clerk tasked with files. Amid the dangers of his work, Robert has a satisfying sex life with his girlfriend. This would soon change. As he goes deeper in his off-book investigation, Robert befriends people he should be investigating. He forms a bond with a young gay student, Arek, and this causes him to question about the propriety and ethics of that friendship. How far can he go with the “different” form of sexuality he is getting to know better?
What truth is out there? What falsity is within us?
As Robert Mrozowski, Tomasz Ziętek has the volatility of a person whose power is in being the unquestionable authority. His perspective is the correct perspective against which other worldviews shall be measured. Obviously, the world of homosexuals is out of consideration in a society that has only one lens to appraise relationships and respect. Robert Mrozowski never sees the fact that any kind of repression always involves a protection of one world from other worlds, where state laws working on banishing other people may actually be about duplicity and hypocrisy. This makes for a deep, singular character sketch and Tomasz Ziętek is a compelling, if not depressing, presence.
Vulnerability for vulnerability, Hubert Miłkowski as Arek has the face and personality that propounds for us how there are only humans not monsters among these communities that institutions, which include a secret police, of a scared society caricature for the sake of their own misguided survival.
The cinematography of Piotr Sobociński Jr. is a crucial part of this narrative where brooding darkness in the cityscape harbors a literal and metaphorical storm made to pour rains and bleakness on the lives of the citizens. The direction of Piotr Domalewski and the screenplay written by Marcin Ciaston never attempt to make the presentation epic. There is an intimacy in the framing of faces, and introspection is by both the lights and shadows through which we are always asked to make sense of conversations or the lack of them, or of gazes and the meanings that are not always there. We are voyeurs in the rooms and private spaces of these individuals whose lives are never safe because those who are supposed to protect them are out to snuff the life and freedom from their biographies.
Operation Hyacinth is streaming everywhere including the Philippines via Netflix.