THE PEASANTS (2023) Sony Pictures Classics Blu-ray Screenshots + Review
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Set in the late 19th century uniquely animated film The Peasants (2023) centers around Jagna (Kamila Urzędowska), a free-spirited and quite attractive peasant girl known for the intricately detailed paper cutouts she creates. Her outspoken ways and devil-may-care attitude have made her fodder for gossip among both the women and men of the village, which seems idyllic on the surface, but just below the pastoral veneer lies a venomous pit of snakes ready to pounce with their wagging tongues. She finds herself in love with the brutish Antek (Robert Gulaczyk), the eldest son of the village's wealthiest farmer, the recently widowed Maciej Boryna (Mirosław Baka). Their love is kept a not so well hidden secret because Antek is already married. More trouble brews when the widowed Maciej chooses young Jagna as his new wife, offering her six acres of fertile land as a dowry. She begrudgingly accepts as seems to be the custom in the village, but her affair with her new husband's son continues, again as a not so well kept secret, leading to scorn and tragedy down the line.
The Peasants was animated by using traditional live-action video capture techniques, then over one hundred painters in four studios spanning Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Serbia painted oil paintings over each of the frames, sort of like the rotoscoping process seen in past animation films like Heavy Metal, Fire and Ice, Lord of the Rings, American Pop, and Waking Life. The process too five years to complete, the finished animation looking like a 19th century oil painting come to life. The movements are more fluid than traditional rotoscoping animation, it's really quite something to see, and it looks just beautiful. At times the looking almost photorealistic but also having a surreal shimmer to it, not unlike rotoscope, but still conveying emotion and dramatic depth quite nicely. Once the film gets emotionally darker towards the end the darkness literally creeps into the animation, the tragic end packs quite a punch, the story which to me comes across as a fairly straightforward scarlet letter variety drama, doesn't tread new ground, by the artful animation style is certainly fetching, and lifts the film quite a bit.
The animation style is quite striking and the performances are strong, particularly from lead Kamila Urzędowska who balances her character's innocence and her more against-the-grain qualities, which forecast potential tragedy early on, quite nicely, leading to an old school 'grab the torch and pitchforks' angry mob scenario that brings it to a not unexpected close, but no less thrilling.