The rise of the industrial era and the capitalist boom it engendered are at the core of Wajda’s epic adaptation of the novel by 1924 Nobel Prize winner W. S. Reymont. The film charts the rise and fall of three ambitious tycoons: Karol, a Polish nobleman; Maks, a German hoping to improve on the fate of his father who ran a failing old-time mill; and Moryc, who appears to be disdained except for these valuable connections. Exposing the ways that workers are exploited for the sake of financial growth, the film builds to a powerful climax that connects it to economic conflicts that were simmering in Poland at the time it was made.