Recently I attended a movie night at the Belgian Club in Vientiane. This month they have been showing various animated films. Last week they showed Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. This week they showed a Polish film called ‘Chlopi’, or ‘The Peasants’ in English. This is a review of the film I wrote shortly after watching the movie.
Spoiler Warning
This review will spoil the entire plot of the film. If you haven’t seen it yet, and don’t want to know what happens, you can check out one of my other articles.
Trigger Warning
This review will discuss sexual assault and rape.
1
Like Waking Life, this film uses rotoscoping to direct it’s animation. The art direction is still very different, making every frame feel more like an old oil painting. Which is really because that’s exactly what each frame of this movie is.
There were times where I thought the movie was giving nods to famous artists. One brief scene reminded me of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. A dance sequence made me think of the works of Degas, especially his studies on ballerinas.
It also made me think of 11-11 Memories Retold, that uses a programmed post filter to achieve a similar effect. By making it feel like you are looking at an oil painting, you are subconsciously drawn into the past, to the world of the movie.
The rotoscoping also allows the creators to add to the movie. Special effects can just be painted in, sets can be enhanced by painting in new details. Short scenes could even just be paintings of a setting that was never filmed. It’s a clever way of combining real performances with the skill of the artists to create a unique look for the movie and its setting.
2
As for the story, it is set in a small village in the 19th century. Based on the novel of the same name, The Peasants is seemingly a story of forbidden love at first, but it becomes a commentary on how rumours and traditional views of women can destroy one’s life.
While Jagna, our protagonist isn’t completely innocent of the affair she has with another man’s husband, she ultimately ends up being blamed for all the village’s ills after having much worse things done to her.
She is forced into a marriage with an old widower she doesn’t love, sold by her own mother for 6 acres of farmland. After the marriage rumours already spread that she is “loose” with many men. These rumours are unfounded, if you exclude her husband’s son, with whom she had the affair.
His son, the man she had the affair with, ends up imprisoned. When the mayor offers to help her, she accepts. He just gets her drunk and tries to rape her.
Her stepson and lover is released from prison after her husband’s death, only to go back to his wife and ignore her. When they meet again she tries to reject him. But he only ever wanted one thing from her and decides that raping her is the best way to get it.
The rumour mill that has been on fire since the beginning of the film ends up blaming her for everything. She has been seducing all the men, including her husband’s son. She even tried to seduce the mayor.
The villagers vote to banish her, but need the word of her former lover to go through with it. He agrees to go along with it, saying that she is dirt and that he never cared about her.
In the final scene she is dragged from her home, her clothes stripped from her and she is put on a cart taking her out of the village. The pull her from the cart and start throwing mud at her, calling her filthy, a whore, and other names. They threaten to set the dogs on her if she ever returns.
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“It’s always the woman’s fault”
While you can argue that her initial affair was wrong, and I’d honestly agree with that, for her to be punished in the way she was at the end you also need to agree that the men who forced her into relationships she didn’t want didn’t do anything wrong. That their sins should be ignored. That it was all her fault for “seducing” them.
She was manipulated, bought, raped, and then raped again. But she’s the whore that seduced the men and should be banished for it.
It’s always the woman’s fault.
4
As the villagers leave her in the dirt it starts raining. She stands up, naked without the dresses and fancy clothes that her husband had bought for her. She stands there as the rain washes away the dirt the villagers left on her.
The she walks away, reborn, ready to face her new life without the evils of the village burdening her anymore. At least, that’s how I personally read the ending.
This is one of the most powerful movies I’ve watched in a long time. Initially I found myself not so interested in the village drama. That kind of thing doesn’t really hook me. But as the rumour mill started to churn and the drama slowly spiralled into the vehement hatred the villagers ended up having for Jagna, I couldn’t stop watching. It’s a terrifying illustration of the damage a (hopefully) dying attitude can cause.
