Another darkly vivid drama from Poland. As with other dramas set here in the recent past, the visuals were a very signifcant part in evoking the grubbily dreary world of Communist Poland, with much of the action, necessarily dramatically, taking place at night with poor public lighting - and even in the daylit scenes, outside there was a steely grayness to the light while indoors the light was harshly unforgiving with a somewhat livid quality. All this was very well done and it created exactly the right world for this drama.
It is based on true events in Poland in the 1980’s when gay men were targeted by the security forces ostensibly as a ‘crime and terrorism prevention method’ in ‘Operation Hyacinth’ and also as a means in internal spying with police raids on underground gathering gay locations resulting in indiivduals being blackmailed to act for the security services - and of course this at a time when homosexuality could be, literally, a death sentence.
This drama has is its focus a young security officer, destined for great things and not ony as his father is a high-ranking officer in the security forces and he is due to marry his daughter, but, as events unfold, someone who has to come to terms with their own, previously unacknowledged/hidden sexuality. The manipulation and covering up of crimes, making use of gay men becomes something that he cannot cope with and he starts to continue an investigation that the hierachy have said is solved.
There is also a vivd picture given of what gay life in Poland was like at that time - and in earlier times, in other countries as well, with private houses as a place for parties and public buildings if that was not possible. The necessarily grubby surreptiousness of such situations was very well caught although, in the private apartment party scenes, there was something of a sense of joy and relaxation as men could relax and be themseves rather than having to constantly play a role and be looking nervously over their shoulders.
The ending was intriguing in that there was not a final 100% resolution to the various areas of, particularly personal, conflict, but it was, nevertheless, satisfying with ahint of optmism, certainly for the cengtral character - if you choxe to see that.
A very fine film.