"The Peasants" -- Movie Review

 

This week, I attended a special screening at Lincoln Center for the historical drama, “The Peasants”, Poland's Oscar® Entry for Best International Feature Film from Sony Pictures Classics. 

Synopsis

When a young woman casts aside traditional values to live her own life as she sees fit, will she be able to overcome the unfounded rumors that are surrounding her by the jealousy older women in the village?

Story

In late 19^th Century Poland, Jagna and her mother live in a small agrarian community.  She is a beautiful, single young woman who is the envy of everyone.  Secretly, Jagna is in love with Antek, who works tirelessly and thanklessly on the farm that belongs to his father Boryna.  Boryna has the most land of any farmer there and as such is seen as both successful and a leader of the community.  Having recently becoming a widower, Boryna’s supporters urge him to remarry; he is resistant to the idea because his wife had just died a few months ago and he is afraid that the townspeople would talk. 

Despite the fact that Jagna and Antek find difficulty arranging trysts, they continue to have a great attraction to each other.  Many of the women in this community talk about her bedding nearly every man in town – rumors which are completely unfounded.  Eventually, Boryna is convinced that he should remarry and that Jagna kept as the main object of his desire.  Boryna schedules a meeting with Jagna’s mother and they come to an agreement where if he marries her daughter, Jagna will inherit a sizable amount of Boryna’s farmland when he passes.  Without Jagna’s knowledge or consent, a wedding between the two is scheduled, to her dismay. 

Once married, Jagna is reluctant to have relations with her new husband.  Soon, it becomes irrelevant as it is discovered that some interlopers in the area are denying the longstanding townspeople access to the wood in the forest, preventing them from building, cooking or heating their homes.  A battle ensues where Boryna perishes, causing Jagna to inherit the land.  By now, however, Antek’s feelings about Jagna have changed because she married his father and now has much of his land, which Antek believes is rightfully his.  But when the townspeople wrongly believe that Jagna is pursuing someone forbidden, will they be able to successfully expel her from their village?

Review

Although an interesting concept, “The Peasants” has some bit of difficulty maintaining suspense or forward momentum as it feels as though the story is rather scattershot.  Also, its conclusion is somewhat ambiguous, leaving the viewer to what one might characterize as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type of ending as to what next happened to Jagna.  However, the overarching problem with “The Peasants” is its complex – and arguably unnecessary – use of what could be described as live-action animation.  It’s both confusing and distracting and a case could be made that it was implemented as a gimmick to make the film seem more artful than it really turned out to be.

First, a little technical background about “The Peasants”:  According to some of the production notes, this movie was shot in live-action before being transformed into painted animation; the film was completed over a two-year period using 40,000 oil paintings by a group of 100+ painters from four different eastern European countries.  After the oil paintings were completed, they were sent to animators so the paintings could be repurposed for the movie.  The motion picture is an adaptation of author Władysław Reymont's Nobel Prize-winning novel of the same name. 

This review is a bit of a challenge to write because on the one hand, the focus should be on the tale itself and the way it was chosen to be told by the director.  But it is difficult to comment on the performances of the cast when their live-action efforts have been transformed into oil paintings which were then further transformed into animation.  It is almost as if the director didn’t want the audience to notice the actors’ performances at all and to instead concentrate on the inherent technical “beauty” of his movie.  That’s unfortunate if true because it obviously does quite a disservice to the actors.