The Peasants

by Mike McGranaghan

If you’ve ever stared at a painting in a museum and wondered what story it would tell you if it came to life, The Peasants will delight you. Directors DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman shot the movie with actors, then had their team create 40,000 oil paintings of the images. The end product resembles Renaissance art that moves. It’s hypnotic, even if the plot occasionally doesn’t live up to the technique.

The setting is a 19th century Polish village. Jagna (Kamila Urzedowska) is a peasant in love with the much wealthier – and very married – Antek (Robert Gulaczyk). Making the situation even stickier is that Antek’s widower father Maciej (Miroslaw Baka) decides to take Jagna as a bride, offering a large dowry. Jagna and Antek continue their affair even after the wedding. Her life spirals into chaos from there.

Despite its elegant look, The Peasants is not a dignified, restrained Merchant Ivory-type period piece. It’s essentially a melodrama, albeit a melodrama that sucks you in with its fiery mixture of elements. There’s overheated sexuality, interpersonal intrigue, a violent fight, an unexpected death, and multiple sexual assaults. In other words, the film isn’t stuffy or boring.

Then again, you don’t get the sort of multilayered emotion normally found in a Merchant Ivory picture, either. Everything is right on the surface. That keeps the pace moving briskly, without creating an experience that engenders any deep emotions. When you see, for example, The Remains of the Day, it’s hard not to be impacted by the repression and romantic longing of its central character. With Jagna, you watch her go through a series of tribulations with great interest, but you won’t necessarily be haunted by her journey in the hours and days afterward.

This is where the opulent animation style comes into play. The look of The Peasants holds it all together, presenting images so magnificent that you won’t want to glance away from the screen for even a second. The ugliness of the plot does slightly work against the beauty of the visuals toward the end. It’s weird to see the sordid climactic events rendered in such a lush manner. Otherwise, the film tells a sufficiently entertaining story in a form that’s incredibly pleasing to the eyes.

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