Metacritic reviews

Bringing this 1,000-page novel to animated life in this way isn’t just an adaptation, it’s an illumination. It makes real the heightened reality that exists in your mind when reading a particularly captivating book.

The Peasants is a ravishingly beautiful visual triumph.

The Peasants again melds oil paintings (some 40,000 of them) over live-action footage of actors to become a dynamic, immersive drama that brings the pleasures and pains of the past to ravishing life.

As a live-action film, The Peasants would’ve been a grand achievement, but by taking the time to animate these frames and add that extra texture to this story, the Welchmans have made one of the most impressive animated films of the year by far.

The narrative proceedings provide sufficient interest for the duration, making it easy to recommend this film.

Where Loving Vincent imagined the great artist’s world in the style of his paintings, The Peasants lacks that same clear purpose. Instead, it’s an animation that feels like a live-action film in disguise.

The film is a match for Lars von Trier’s Dogville in its grimly relentless approach to misogyny and sexual violence. A disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.

The Peasants is a histrionic and often-ludicrous bummer, one that wastes the deeply committed performance of star-in-the-making Kamila Urzedowska. The Welchmans deserve credit for developing a unique style. Now it is time to write words that match these images.

There is visual interest here, but for me the drama isn’t sustained.

There is some fun to be derived from supposedly maggoty peasants muttering rosaries against inclement weather while looking as if they’ve been styled for the Emmanuelle reboot. But not enough to justify a feature film, let alone all those paintings.