Rating: 2.5/5
Lipce, Poland, 1900
Jagna is finally the marrying age. While she wants Antek, he is married. It is Antek’s widower father, Maciej, who makes the bid that Jagna’s parents choose. So, against her wishes, Jagna marries Maciej.
Maciej promises a substantial sum of land to Jagna, much to the ire of his children, from whom he has kept all land rights. Add to that the rumors whispered about Jagna being the town slut, as boys claim to have slept with her. Antek’s continued advances on her do no favors.
We follow Jagna as men beat and rape her, women spit at and curse her, and she goes along with it because…
The movie’s gimmick is that every frame is a painting. At times, the scenes are breathtaking. At others, it looks like the live-action sequences from Myst.
This awkward style is the cost of filming footage and then painting the footage frame-by-frame. Also, the filmmakers did not have faith in the process, so they embedded highly detailed person renderings in abstract settings, further causing the 90s point-and-click aesthetic.
In art school, I had teachers who would talk about letting a medium be itself. This sentiment was primarily in response to the amount of painting from photographs and not deviating from them. If you’re painting a photo, why not make the photo the art piece?
Here, with how much detail they render — including, unfortunately, cheap studio lighting — it makes me wonder why the gimmick at all.
The story is a horror show, and it has nothing to say other than, “That’s people for you.” Why the filmmakers would dedicate five years to this story is beyond me. From a time and setting perspective, I get it — evoking the paintings of peasants from the era (and referencing them) speaks to an artistic history. But why this story?
This film occasionally stumbles into beauty but is such a failure of imagination that the experience isn’t worth it.