Hiacynt

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.

Glad to be just a newborn during that period of time (1985-1987) from what I saw on this movie.

It is successful in painting bleak and grimy days of communist Poland and it is respectful to every party involved, even the police/militia lol.

Good job to everyone involved. IMO this is better than other similarly themed Netflix original movies: Dance of 41, Dear Ex and I Am Jonas.

Wow, just wow. This movie was everything I expected and so much more. Amazing. It is a must watch. Had me so invested, will be watching it again. Good job Netflix on this one.

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.