[Film Review] Silent Night (2017) and Operation Hyacinth (2021)

Two films from emergent Polish filmmaker Piotr Domalewski. SILENT NIGHT is his first feature, Adam (Ogrodnik), a prodigal son returns home unannounced from abroad for the family gathering, harboring a plan to better his future and reconcile with his young brother Pawel (Zietek), who has deserted him in Holland months ago where they had been working together.

The setup is familiar, jollification pervades around that particularly festive time. But for some, it is perhaps the only occasion where every members of the family can gather in one place and let whatever current conflicts or old grudges vent in the open. Carrying a camcorder to shoot videos for his still in utero baby, which would serve as an exhilarating news to the family, Adam has also devised a plan to sell a family property nearby as the grubstake for him to start a business in Holland. So all he needs is the approval from his father, Pawel and Jolla (Debska), his married sister.

Operating his camera inside a rural Polish household and around its purlieus, often on a dime and alternating with the camcorder image, Domalewski exhibits an uncharacteristic proficiency in capturing all the tensions, undertows and hilarities that reside in every ordinary family. Also, comments about a Pole’s emigrant experience, the rancor towards an absent father, alcoholism, Catholicism, toxic masculinity, and domestic abuse, are all integrated into Domalewski’s script with enough credibility. However, SILENT NIGHT isn’t going to let Adam get what he wants. A double whammy would both shake him to the core and shatter his plan into smithereens (although Pawel’s bombshell could’ve been easily lost in the shuffle for subtitle readers). At the end of the day, watching the camcorder videos shot by Kasia (Tyszkiewicz), his little sister, Adam is given a keepsake to remind of that love/hate imbroglio called “family” which now he tries to break away from.

OPERATION HYACINTH is Damalewski’s third feature, a mid-1980s police procedural about the notorious secret operation against homosexuals at the hands of Polish police. Zietek is promoted to play the protagonist Robert, a young police officer of Citizens' Militia, the national police organization of the Polish People's Republic.

Witnessing innocent people brutally railroaded into confession in the wake of a series of homicides targeting gay men, and increasingly frustrated by the police department’s cover-up, including his own father Edward (a saturnine Kalita), Robert befriends a young student Arek (Milkowski), who is involved in the local gay scene and might help shed a light on the real killer.

As a murder mystery, OPERATION HYACINTH is unexceptional, following the paper trails and defying mounting opposition are the go-to options. Marcin Ciaston’s script is light both on the bigger picture of the operation (the involvement of the police is never fully expounded) and the LGBT culture at that time (nonetheless, during the investigation room scenes, Tomasz Wlosok’s Tadek is a limelight stealer for shifting from flouting flamboyance to disconcerted poignancy at the drop of the hat whereas Piotr Trojan’s Kamil is squarely heartrending to watch) but heavy on Robert’s reluctant discovery of his own untapped sexuality. Every time he senses a feeling for Arek, he seeks his fiancée Halinka (Chlebicka) for intimacy to reaffirm his heteronormative potency, but with diminishing returns.

Crimped by the historical events, Robert can’t right the enormous wrong, the chief malefactor is unscathed, justice hasn’t prevailed in the end. But to keep Arek, who isn’t exactly a doe-eyed curly cutie as he appears to be, out of harm’s way, is his own victory, a very personal and pyrrhic one too.

This time around, Damalewski’s directorial acumen and aesthetic discernment are validated by constructing a serpentine plot on a grander scale with admirable restraint and emotional truth. And the film’s retro, somber palette almost bursts out of every frame, foreshadowing its story’s darkness while the chilly, subdued, nocturnal luster throbs with bewitchingly oppressive, erotic vibes that signify sex is a cocktail of both danger, abandon and the reveal of one’s true color, sending an unspoken affirmation to the resilience of queerness.

Both Damalewski’s films bring the best out of their leading men. Ogrodnik convincingly hides Adam’s restiveness underneath his gregarious pretence, trying to dispel the estrangement between him and his parents (played by Suchora and Jakubik, both nail the delicate calibration between closeness and distance), yet there is palpable sorrow in his self-conscious seesawing between embracing and fleeing from his family. It is a very unostentatious performance, and Ogrodnik emanates that unusual trustworthiness that can thaw audience’s objectivity and make us care for his character.

Zietek, whose Pawel is mostly muted and unforthcoming in SILENT NIGHT as a harbinger of a damning secret, is remodeled to resemble a youthful Alain Delon with a fetching mustache in OPERATION HYACINTH. His Robert must rediscover himself and brave a perfect storm that would forever change his privileged lot, and Zietek projects Robert’s flinty gaze scorchingly to the vice in the human forms, tacitly asserting that his actions is merely the right thing to do for any decent person, rendering his sexual orientation irrelevant and knocking the film’s central message out of the park.

referential entries: Jan Komasa’s CORPUS CHRISTI (2019, 7.4/10); Pawel Pawlikowski’s IDA (2013, 7.3/10); William Friedkin’s CRUISING (1980, 7.4/10); Robin Campillo’s BPM (BEATS PER MINUTE) (2017, 8.1/10).

English Title: Silent Night

Original Title: Cicha noc

Year: 2017

Country: Poland

Language: Polish

Genre: Drama, Comedy

Director/Screenwriter: Piotr Domalewski

Music: Waclaw Zimpel

Cinematography: Piotr Sobocinski Jr.

Editor: Leszek Starzynski

Cast:

Dawid Ogrodnik

Tomasz Zietek

Agnieszka Suchora

Arkadiusz Jakubik

Amelia Tyszkiewicz

Maria Debska

Tomasz Schuchardt

Magdalena Zak

Pawel Nowisz

Elzbieta Kepinska

Adam Cywka

Jowita Budnik

Mateusz Wieclawek

Katarzyna Domalewska

Milena Staszuk

Konrad Eleryk

Artur Steranko

Rating: 7.1/10

English Title: Operation Hyacinth

Original Title: Hiacynt

Year: 2021

Country: Poland

Language: Polish

Genre: Drama, Crime

Director: Piotr Domalewski

Screenwriter: Marcin Ciaston

Music: Wojciech Urbanski

Cinematography: Piotr Sobocinski Jr.

Editor: Agnieszka Glinska

Cast:

Tomasz Zietek

Hubert Milkowski

Marek Kalita

Adrianna Chlebicka

Tomasz Schuchardt

Sebastian Stankiewicz

Jacek Poniedzialek

Agnieszka Suchora

Tomasz Wlosok

Piotr Trojan

Miroslaw Zbrojewicz

Andrzej Klak

Adam Cywka

Elzbieta Kepinska

Rating: 7.4/10