The Peasants, A Nobel Prize-Winner Animated

Most of these peasants are poor, but some are wealthy. In a few years, their many of their ilk would be dubbed “Kulaks” (with fatal results). Regardless, this early Nineteenth Century Polish village hangs together as a community, except when it turns on one of its own. Jagna Paczesiowna is too independently inclined to conform to the Lipce villagers’ prejudices in DK & Hugh Welchman’s extraordinary animated film, The Peasants, adapted from Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Every single man in Lipce wants to “send vodka” to Jagna’s widowed mother Dominikowa, but she has no desire to surrender herself to a husband. Unfortunately, there is no refusing Marciej Boryna, a wealthy farmer, whose wife recently died. Their marriage is especially awkward for Jagna, because she was having an affair with Boryna’s married son and farm manager, Antek.

Of course, they continue carrying after the marriage—often a little too openly for her husband’s liking. This tension leads to greater feuds between father and son, resulting in the expulsion of Antek, his wife Hanka, and their children from the Boryna holdings. However, the old man is not unsympathetic towards Hanka and his grandchildren. In fact, he will make his daughter-in-law the new manager when tragedy the family.

Lipce might be a village Polish village just after the turn of the century, but the dynamics are the same as Peyton Place, accept maybe darker. This is Poland, so the arrival of Cossacks (at the behest of absentee landowners) is definitely bad news. The locals’ hidebound traditional ways can also manifest in harsh, almost pagan scapegoating rituals.

Yet, the film is absolutely gorgeous, visually. As with their previous feature, Loving Vincent, the Welchmans employ era-appropriate paintings as the basis for their animation, but they draw on multiple artists. Again, they also incorporate live-action performances, rendering them into animation, in what might be the classiest rotoscoping ever.

The tribulations rained down on Jagna can be a bit grim, but the film still offers much beauty. Frankly, the poetic transitions between seasons are works of art in and of themselves. The Welchmans’ adaptation also really stretches to end on a somewhat remotely positive note. They sort of pull it off, relying a great deal of ambiguity.

As in Loving Vincent, there are some real performances in The Peasants, especially Kamila Urzedowska, who looks ethereally waifish as the desired and demonized Jagna. Robert Gulaczyk is also intensely brutish as rugged Antek, while Mateusz Rusin supplies a compassionate counterpoint as the torch-carrying carpenter.

The artistry of The Peasants is simply amazing. It is not quite as emotionally satisfying as Loving Vincent, but there is still a great deal of heft and substance to the passionate melodrama. It is stunning animation as well as a high-caliber soap opera. Enthusiastically recommended for connoisseurs of animation and Polish art and culture, The Peasants opens tomorrow (1/26) at the Angelika Film Center and the New Plaza Cinema.