Rating: R | Runtime: 114 minutes
Release Date: October 13th, 2023 (Poland) / January 26th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Next Film / Sony Pictures Classics
Director(s): DK Welchman & Hugh Welchman
Writer(s): DK Welchman & Hugh Welchman / Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont (novel)

There must be something more important in life.

The concept fit like a glove: tell a story about Vincent Van Gogh, inspired by the letters he sent to his brother, in the expressionistic style of the artist. Loving Vincent wasn’t a perfect movie, but DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman had a winner regardless because of the sheer audacity of its creation.

I’m not so sure that same audacity can carry their follow-up. Not because it doesn’t remain a beautiful and painstaking work of cinematic art, but because adapting Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont‘s Nobel Prize-winning novel The Peasants doesn’t possess a need for the aesthetic. Besides the gorgeous time-lapse transitions between the seasons, the whole simply looks like a rotoscope pass of an already shot live-action movie. What does that layer of paint therefore add to it beyond a gimmick whose craft might help smooth over any deficiencies of the film itself by driving the conversation?

That which exists underneath those brushstrokes is fine. A tale about the nightmare of living as a beautiful peasant woman in a 19th century Polish village—property to be bartered, sold, and exploited either physically for sex or emotionally as a scapegoat for the community at-large’s vast shortcomings. What ensues is a tragic depiction of surviving the misogyny of those she loves, those who love her, and any other opportunist willing to jump on the bandwagon for profit at her expense.

It’s an ever-increasing example of mob justice wherein everyone is either a coward deflecting from their own flaws or a victim of violent abuse for daring to stand-up for the truth. It’s miserablism at its finest. A look back in time to see the dark shadows of the present’s continued injustice with good production value, good performances, and an unnecessary painterly sheen. It’s worth a look, but I’m not sure it offers much beyond the evolution of what has become the directors’ animated oil-painting trademark.

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A painted frame from THE PEASANTS; photo by Malgorzata Kuznik, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.