Through the shimmer of hand-painted animation. DK and Hugh Welchman tell the tempestuous, brutal story of local beauty Jagna and her reputational downfall and ostracism in The Peasants.
Nineteenth-century Polish farming life presents as no pastoral idyll, as the patriarchal and predatory village of gossips Jagna lives in is swayed by lynch-mob consensus. Nobel-winning writer Wladyslaw Reymont’s novel of the same name (written in four volumes from 1904 to 1909) is brought to luminous life with a vigour that channels the decadence and neo-romanticism of the Young Poland artists of that era. The gorgeous, oil-painted frames use a live-action shoot as their base, a pain-staking technique similar to that used by the directors for Loving Vincent (2017), their biographical drama about painter Vincent van Gogh.
Poland’s Oscar entry, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, is rapturous and sensuous yet dark and uncompromising. Its age-old theme of female sexuality repressed with escalating malice should resonate widely, and its feverish emotionality act as a sure hook. The ending of this tale of jealousy and desperate survival grants Jagna dignity in independence, though scant comfort or consolation amid stark sexual violence and a vicious denouement.
Jagna (Kamila Urzedowska) is at the age where her mother is eager to get her married off. “Love comes and goes, but land says,” says the scheming match-maker, her goal being to ease financial pressures, rather than indulge anything so flippant as true love. She successfully sets her sights for her daughter’s wedding on Maciej Boryna (Miroslaw Baka), considering his advanced age a mere footnote to his assets as the village’s richest farmer. Jagna’s reluctance is compounded by a magnetic attraction to Maciej’s son, Antek (Robert Gulaczyk). Antek shares her longing, despite already having children with a devoted wife, Hanka (Sonia Mietielica). Antek is at loggerheads with his father over property and potential inheritance — hostility compounded when he and Jagna start an illicit affair. After Boryna gives Jagna six acres of land as a dowry, he kicks his son’s family out to scrabble for survival, close to starving, on their own.
Complicating the village dynamics, Jagna is no demure, primly innocent maiden wrongly slighted, but rather a desiring and libidinous force with little respect for moral convention or indeed the feelings of others (such is the hardboiled opportunism on which the village cogs turn). Nor does she have much enthusiasm for the necessary drudgeries of domestic chores, preferring to spend her time creatively, crafting paper cut-outs to decorate the home. She was already a target for the nasty barbs of sanctimonious chatter, a previous dalliance with a farmhand having sparked rumours of licentiousness. But that is nothing compared to the scandal and animosity that erupts over her new triangulated attachments. The village frequently tips over into the carnivalesque at a number of drunken celebrations of wild dancing, whipped along by a wonderful soundtrack by Lukasz “L.U.C.” Rostkowski derived from Polish folk songs.
The Peasants follows four seasonal chapters, just as rural life is dominated by nature’s cycles, to end in Summer — but the poor harvest is far from a welcome fruit of renewal, only increasing the atmosphere of threat and a common impulse to find someone to blame. Jagna’s beauty had afforded her a certain power in the village, but it amounts to nothing without male protection. In a class dimension to the tale, the farmers are hitting back at the oppressive domination of the landowners who have been cutting down their forests without premission. An attempt at an uprising leaves Maciej wounded and Antek arrested, and Jagna in physical danger, as the mayor tries to use the situation to take advantage of her, and the villagers see her increased vulnerability as an opportunity to destroy her position and influence once and for all.
Directors, Writers: DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman
Cinematography: Radoslaw Ladczuk, Kamil Polak, Szymon Kuriata
Editing: DK Welchman
Cast: Kamila Urzedowska, Robert Gulaczyk, Sonia Mietielica, Miroslaw Baka, Ewa Kasprzyk
Animator: Piotr Dominiak
Production Design: Elwira Pluta, Piotr Dominiak
Sound: Michal Jankowski
Music: Lukasz “L.U.C.” Rostkowski
Producers: DK Welchman, Sean M. Bobbitt
Production companies: DigitalKraft doo, Art. Shot, BreakThru Films, Chlopi Sp. Z o.o.
Sales: New Europe Film Sales
Venue: World Premiere Toronto International Film Festival
In Polish
114 minutes
