Starring: Kamila Urzędowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Mirosław Baka
Directed by: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Film, paint and animate, no matter how long it takes to achieve the desired effect. In Chłopi (The Peasants, 2023) the Welchmans propose again the same 3-step painstaking technique used to confect visually bedazzling Loving Vincent (2017), an animated film that deep-dives into the meanders of Van Gogh’s psyche and creative process. The Peasants is a liberal adaptation of Wladyslaw Reymont ‘s rural literary saga of the same name, which the Polish writer completed in 1909.
The Welchmans’ most recent effort narrows down the plot to the hardships as experienced by Jagna (Kamila Urzędowska), a fascinating and unfeigned peasant, whose status in the village does not stop worsening, after she engages in a passionate and secret affair with a young married villager, Antek (Robert Gulaczyk). Meanwhile Jagna accepts to marry Antek’s father and widower, Maciej (Mirosław Baka), who also happens to be the wealthiest man in the village. Not only Jagna’s conduct is considered dishonorable by the other peasants, but she starts soon to be considered the cause of all the disgraces that strike the village.
The directing duo drew inspiration among others from Józef Chełmoński’s rural landscape paintings to compose some of the scenes in the movie. They also opted for preserving Remont’s division of their trimmed to the-bone cinematic adaptation in 4 parts to celebrate countryside life in Poland through all the seasons. All things considered, the resulting plot that insists on Jagna’s misfortunes is over-sensational, at best.
Nevertheless, the splending layer of animated oil painting gives luster to Welchmans’ soap opera-esque animated feature film. The Peasants resembles a big turbo-slavic cinematic marshmallow that could turn up the nose of Reymont specialists and ethnographers. Welchmans’ film is a veritable feast for the eyes, and that is enough. The wedding dance sequences in which Jagna’s spirals likes a dervish with the groom and the guests, are heady in their dynamism as well as chromatically intoxicating.
Apart from becoming a box-office blast on the domestic market, to the dismay of some commentators, The Peasants prevailed over Holland’s refugee drama Zielona granica (The Green Border) as Poland’s Oscar submission for next year.
Film Reviewed by Giuseppe Sedia
Published by Kino Mania on November 12, 2023