The Peasants is like high school: beautiful and unbearable... and very animated.

The Peasants is an animated film set on the cusp of the 19th & 20th centuries in a small, rural Polish village. The story focuses on a person who had the double misfortune of being born a woman and, even worse, beautiful, proving that some things never change.

The animation is next-level gorgeous. Helmed by husband and wife team DK and Hugh Welchman (who made my favorite animated from of all time: Loving Vincent), 100 artists produced oil paintings based on the original film shot with actors. These oil paintings became frames in the film, which were then supplemented by animators to make the action seamless. According to the movie's Wikipedia page, artists spent over 200,000 hours making the film, and you can believe me when I tell you every second of that is up on the screen in all its glory.

Sadly, the script is less impressive. Personally, I didn't need to see another reminder that people are beasts and women are victims -- I see enough of that online. Also, from a writing standpoint, the lead character has no real motivation or arc, so the viewer is left to fill this vacuum with the assumption that the filmmakers simply want us to watch a woman suffer.

Maybe the solution is to wait for this to stream and watch it with the sound off. :mute: