Loving Vincent & The Peasants (Chłopi) | PIOTR GZOWSKI

As a very young boy, I recall watching my sister Krystyna, whose was an artist, paint. What captivated me was the precise choreography of the brush intricately balanced in her hand tapping onto the pallet to gather a meticulous amount of paint, followed by the extension of her arm and the tip of the brush carefully and lightly touching the canvas like the toe of a ballet shoe gracefully stepping onto the stage – each subsequent movement carefully assembling a picture whose natural motion was permanently preserved on the canvas. Those very few times, watching her work, even while I posed for her, inspired me years later to spend enormous amounts of time alone in museums sitting or standing before paintings, imagining them breathing and moving with a life of their own. And those flights imagination, in turn, further created an enchantment with animated film. From the early works of Disney through the outrageousness of Looney Tunes, through the entry of computer animation of Star Wars, arriving at the intricate fusion of live action with CGI in the Game of Thrones, film animation has held me in a state of awe throughout each new level of its development.

Dorota Kobiela, however, has taken film animation to an even higher level. In 2017, Kobiela and her spouse Hugh Welchman released a work entitled Loving Vincent. The project, a Polish-UK collaboration (English language) spearheaded by Kobiela, an accomplished artist-painter as well as filmmaker, employed scores of European painters and engaged them to create over 65,000 individually hand painted cels of Vincent Van Gogh’s portraits of Armand Roulin, Adeline Ravoux, Dr. Gachet, Marguerite Gachet, Louise Chevalier as well dozens of the Artist’s landscapes. Each individual frame intricately detailed Van Gogh’s signature brushstrokes. Live actors (Douglas Booth as Roulin, Robert Gulaczyk as van Gogh, Saoirse Ronan as Margueritte, Jerome Flynn as Gachet and Helen McCrory -in her final role – as Louise Chevalier) were there then filmed playing out the screenplay on sparsely furnished green screen sound stages. The last step was an electronic blending of all the elements which created a moving, breathing Van Gogh painting in which the characters in Van Gogh portrayed played out the mystery of the circumstance which led to Van Gogh’s apparent suicide.

The effect of the work is that one is not simply watching a cleverly animated film but the consummation of a marriage of esthetics (the technical aspects of beauty) and aesthetics (the emotional and sensory experience of beauty). The child conceived as a result of this union – the film Loving Vincent - is nothing less than stunning. (The film is available for rental on Prime for a very reasonable fee).

In 1924, Władysław Reymont was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his four part epic - Chłopi (The Peasants). The novel which unravels in four volumes - Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer revolves around three main characters - the beautiful Jagna, Antek Boryna, her married lover, and Maciej Boryna, the richest man in the village, Antek’s father and someone who eventually arranges to marry a reluctant Jagna. It is a tragedy about unrequited love, betrayal, retaliation, and rash punishment, and it is a work that was touted as the most accurate and realistic depiction of the lifestyles, the traditions, and the behaviors of Polish peasantry at the onset of the 20th century.

In 1922, the novel was adapted for the Polish motion picture screen by director Eugeniusz Modzelewski. Supposedly it was an interesting effort unfortunately all traces of the film were lost during Worl War II. The Peasants was, however, subsequently resurrected as a television miniseries in 1972-73 byJan Rybkowski (segments are still available for viewing on You Tube). Although the direction, music, acting, and costuming are commendable, the TV series (perhaps due to the limiting size of the television screen) seems a bit like a melodramatic soap opera encumbered by too many closeups, crowded shots and quick physical transitions. Conceptually, it may have been too large of a story for such a small screen. And although the 1972-73 program is a tribute to Reymont’s work, it ultimately lacks impact.

The Kobiela-Welchman team, however, has recently released an animated Polish language edition (with subtitles) which raises the novel to the level it deserves on film. In the 2023 version of The Peasants the creators expanded the scope of their production. More than a hundred painters were engaged in the four studios located in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Serbia where the majority of the work took place. The cast of the film included Robert Gulaczyk (Van Gogh in Loving Vincent) and the beautiful and talented newcomer Kamila Urzędowska in the roles of Antek and Jagna. Veteran film actor Miroslaw Baka is cast as Maciej Boryna, Antek’s father and Jagna’s husband. Instead of concentrating on the works of single artist, Kobiela chose the leading artist of the Young Poland (Młoda Polska) Movement of the early 20th Century - Józef Chełmoński, Ferdynand Ruszczyc, and Leon Wyczółkowski – as the source for the background scenery and locations. Over 200,000 hours were devoted to creating the individual frames that crafted the world and the time of Reymont’s classic. The result was a film that highlighted and magnified the characters, the emotions, and the events to an epic level. It was no longer just a tale which the critic Wendy Ide of The Guardian once aptly described as a „a disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity” but a visual saga which envelopes its audience in a seductively emotional embrace.

Kobiela and Welchman, premiered the final product of their work at the 48th Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023. Chlopi (The Peasants) celebrated its official public premiere in Poland in October 2023. For those who have not had the experience of catching the film in its limited release, now can access it as a reasonable available rental on Prime.

With the ever-evolving sophistication of computer-generated imagery, the animated film has reached an unprecedented level of virtual reality. The HBO series Game of Thrones offered undisputable proof that whatever one wanted to imagine, to see or to believe technology could create. However, it requires a certain unique ingenuity in cinematic animation to resurrect my imagination and to transport me back to that moment when I stood in front of a Jackson Polack painting at the MOMA in New York City and actually saw it move. or to feel the swoop of a Clyfford Still brushstroke as it traversed a giant canvas on the wall of the Still Museum in Denver. In the films - Loving Vincent and The Peasants (Chłopi) - Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman recently provided that experience for me once again. And it was wonderful.

Of course, as always, dear reader, this is only my opinion. Experience these films and then judge for yourself.

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Author’s Postscript – The Young Poland (Młoda Polska) was a modernist movement within the Polish visual arts, music, and literature which promoted a blend of neo-romanticism, symbolism, impressionism, and art nouveau. Coined by Polish writer Artur Gorski in 1989, Young Poland expressed a disillusionment with bourgeois lifestyle and values. One of its leading artists who besides painting was also a prolific writer was Stanislaw Wyspiański, who produced some of the most beautiful works of Polish art. The hub of the Movement was in Krakow, where fruits of the Young Poland Movement can still be viewed today. I was fortunate to sample a generous portion of the works of all the artists mentioned in this article when I visited Krakow. It was an unforgettable experience, and Mloda Polska has become my favorite period in Polish Art History).