When reading The Return of Martin Guerre it was somewhat difficult to accurately imagine what life looked like at the time. Most depictions of peasant life in the late medieval/renaissance period show a people who are typically poor, dirty, diseased and miserable, be it in comedic parody or Hollywood dramas.

I will be honest in saying that my first experience with this story did not come from the book but the French 1982 movie. I knew the general premise from class, but being that my main area of interest in regards to history is from the enlightenment to the present, the lives of peasants seemed pretty uninteresting to me. Had I read the book first I would have needed to remind myself that this was during the Renaissance, for such was my prejudice. I expected uneducated and religiously adherent people, and while that was true to some extent, there was a surprising amount of nuance. The village of Artigat is a lovely rural setting. The people, dirty from their hard labor, are not filthy or necessarily unkempt. Their faith, while far more prominent given the time period, hasn’t wiped away some old traditions. They may not have be knowledgeable of matters on the macro scale, but were plenty well versed in things that mattered in their own society such as property rights and even legal codes.

Over all, the greatest thing that the film adds is the ability to see these people as they might have lived, worked and interacted with one another. To see the lives of these people play out in the background of the main plot enriches the whole experience of this bizarre tale, and draws you into the world Martin Guerre, Bertrande, and Arnaud once lived in.