AFI Fest 2023: The Peasants, The Universal Theory, The Echo
By Sophia Fijman
If you were to ask a number of filmmakers what it is that they do, at least a few will tell you they’re a “storyteller” – the film industry has created this notion that to entertain is to tell a story. And it’s rooted in anthropological truth. As humans, we are constantly telling stories and have been for ages. Storytelling is at the core of filmmaking, so why have recent projects seemed to forget that?
I’m undoubtedly not the only one to say this, but it’s something I’ve noticed – recent films will sweep their stories to the side and focus on something like eye-catching visuals or rely on genre expectations. Attending the American Film Institute’s Film Festival only confirmed that this extends to the festival circuit and arthouse works. I watched ten films across five days at the Chinese Theatres in Hollywood, only a few of which I had strong feelings about. Many of the screenings I attended did not leave a positive or negative impression on me, but rather landed as underwhelming. Two films in particular were tepid, in a word, with an apparent neglect to storytelling.
The first film I watched – The Peasants or Chłopi (2023), – totally exemplifies this. My expectations weren’t monumental, but my standards are admittedly probably higher than the average box office consumer, and The Peasants had a reputation to uphold – one having to do with The Academy. For one thing, it’s the second project from DK and Hugh Welchman, directors of the relatively successful and Academy recognized film, Loving Vincent (2017). Praised for its experimental medium and intense depiction of Vincent Van Gogh’s psychological struggles, the film was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2018 Oscars. The Peasants is also Poland’s official 2024 Oscar submission for Best International Feature Film, and this was advertised to the audience before the film was screened. Both films are composed entirely of tens of thousands of oil paintings. Suffice to say – I believed that The Peasants would leave me impressed as I waited for it to start and, while I can confidently say that this was a decent film, I left questioning its lukewarm story. What drives the plot of The Peasants? My answer: not much.
It’s difficult to find a specific reason why this story is being told. According to its directors, the film was adapted from a thousand page novel written over a century ago. And while I haven’t read the book, condensing it into a film with an hour and 55 minute runtime seems to have taken from the story any heart that may have been there in the first place. Its main characters and their individual histories were archetypal – they could have easily been placed in other period pieces and functioned similarly as ‘promiscuous woman shunned by her village’ and ‘cheating man who can’t properly express his emotions.’ I didn’t feel compelled to care about them as people except in the most dire moments (avoiding spoilers – the final scene featuring the film’s protagonist).
I did get the chance to speak with the composer, Łukasz Rostkowski (L.U.C), after the screening, who elaborated on his intention in mixing traditional slavic music for the score and choosing between vocalization and instrumentation at critical story beats. He explained that his choice to incorporate the two was, indeed, intentional, and that he had conversed with DK Welchman about vocalizing, serving as the main character’s voice throughout an emotional journey. To me, that implied that the instrumentation was that of the Greek chorus style village in which the story takes place. While his input and stand-out score felt genuine and enriched my viewing, I felt that the film as a whole didn’t read as having the same level of purpose.
Instead, The Peasants relied too heavily on the novelty of its medium and its creators’ past success. That’s not to discredit the film’s artistic elements – it is truly beautiful and impressively done, particularly in its dance sequences. And I do feel that the medium may have better served a biopic about a famous painter, but here they felt ornamental – like a tactic to draw in viewers to a story that lacks motivation. Sure it’s a challenge to adapt anything, but The Peasants as a film cared too much about creating imagery and, for me, not enough about telling a compelling story.
Directed by Timm Kröger, The Universal Theory or Die Theorie von Allem (2023) fell victim to a similar story-neglecting preoccupation but, in contrast to The Peasants, was too convoluted rather than too simple. My expectations were also set quite high for this film, as the Director of the Festival, Todd Hitchock, introduced it as “one of [his] personal favorites” and one of only a few films to have more than one screening in the festival’s lineup.
But I left the theater after this film, too, feeling as if the film lacked characterization. It’s unique as far as multiverse films go, but there’s little drive. In recent years, the multiverse, metaverse, and general reality rifts have become a conceptual trend. While I was hoping for a fresher, more sophisticated take on that plot device, this film lost me in just how much it left unanswered. I feel that there’s a crucial distinction between confusion and suspense that is necessary to employ in thrillers, and while The Universal Theory seemed to be aiming for the latter, it stopped short of doing so properly. I did feel that the film held my attention, but it was because I was confused by its seemingly random plot points and did not leave feeling satisfied by its ending.
The multiverse might not be entirely to blame for The Universal Theory’s haphazard story, but it certainly was a factor. It’s uninspired, for one thing. The film expects to get away with the fact that its entire plot centers around strange happenings that are never explained, plainly because it’s a multiverse film. It would make sense to pepper in a few, but the multiversal events take up more space in the plot than any story development or sense of urgency.
I will say, however, that the film’s camera work was intriguing. There were a number of sprawling shots of the alps and cleverly angled cinematography in scenes with high intensity. The Universal Theory had the potential to be both a good story and a fresh and interesting take on multiverse – though I’m not sure the latter is even possible in the current filmmaking scene – but I simply did not care much at all about its characters and their stories. The Universal Theory is painfully and ineffectively Hitchcockesque in its motifs and its main plotline in which an uninteresting male main character becomes obsessed with a manic pixie multi-identity dream girl, neither of which have distinctive personalities.
I watched The Echo or El Eco (2023), directed by Tatiana Huezo, on the final day of AFI’s 2023 film festival. At that point, I’d seen a number of films that fell flat as stories. The Echo, however, was refreshingly nuanced. Its storytelling was leagues ahead of some other films and the strongest of the ten I saw at AFI – and it accomplished that without a fictional narrative.
In fact, the presentation of The Echo as a documentary is arguably its greatest asset. The film avoids relying on one cinematic aspect, and I believe that’s why it’s so successful in crafting what other films lack. For one thing, it paints a fully-developed portrait of its subjects, spending time with each of the people it chooses to highlight, and weaving them in and out of the overall narrative in a way that feels natural, balanced, and real – because it is. It’s full of the subtleties of life and smaller individual stories strung together by a common theme, making for a markedly good documentary and a cohesive story. While viewing it, I could feel how clearly the filmmakers were aware of their intentions with the film because of how well each sequence and arc played into the film’s subject matter – that being children, learning, and exploring that which connects a multigenerational family. The Echo is aptly named, put simply, obvious in how it intersperses incredibly human moments and stories of family and children learning from each other, with the echo of previous and present generations palpable. I was pleasantly surprised by how much The Echo focused on painting a clear and realistic picture of the family’s children. Their faces and reactions were frequently shown while adults were speaking. It’s admirable, in fact, the way that the film deliberately chooses to spend time with individual people, their traditions, teachings, and even superstitions, creating a culturally rich multi-generational story.
The Echo doesn’t trade its moving storytelling or timeless theme for technical elements, though. In fact, the film’s camera work enriches its plot. It lingers on nature, but not for too long – more than a few times, the audience is brought up close and personal with flora and fauna. In fact, the final shot is visually gorgeous, and echoes multiple other frames of landscape included throughout the film. I was enthralled by The Echo, to say the least, but especially by how apparent its filmmakers’ dedication was to their subject matter. The film is such a thorough chronicle of one family’s life, and uses vignettes especially well to present the intricacies of each person’s character.
It feels trite to comment on the apparent lack of attention given to storytelling in modern filmmaking, but it's a very clear trend for me – it’s becoming increasingly obvious that filmmakers rely on something pretty to look at, something stylistically similar to an old famous director, genre conventions, or even adapted material to keep audiences engaged. Yet that doesn’t mean that plots need to be insanely dramatic. In fact, my favorite films at AFI were stories rooted in the mundanities of life. It makes me wonder if filmmakers are aware that it’s okay for your film to lack a ‘gimmick’ to interact with attention span; that to be a jack of all trades can actually be beneficial to storytelling. That filmmaking is storytelling, not an asset to it.
For a full list of the films I saw at AFI Fest 2023, check out this link: https://letterboxd.com/sfij11/tag/afi-23/films/