Pieter Bruegel's 1564 painting "The Procession to Calvary" is a very unusual artistic creation. It features 500 religious, historical, and everyday people set alongside Christ's crucifixion. In this unusual film, Polish filmmaker Lech Majewski brings the painting to life using state-of-the-art special effects. There is very little dialogue as the director wants us to step into the painting and let our senses play a larger role than reason. There is no narrator to hold things together, just a shifting from one scene or theme to another.
We hear various sporadic comments by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel (Rutger Hauer), a father of six whose wife is much younger than he is. The artist talks with a wealthy banker and art collector (Michael York) who is upset by the persecution of Flemish citizens during the Spanish Inquisition. Bruegel gives us hints of his own protest of this barbarity. There are also a few words by the Virgin Mary (Charlotte Rampling) who laments the way the people of Jerusalem turned against her suffering Son. We are meant to see that Jesus is crucified again and again as the Spanish torment and murder those who do not follow the dogmas of orthodox Catholic faith. We see a peasant who is one such victim.
The Mill & The Cross stands alongside The Girl With the Pearl Earring and Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark as creative ways of dealing with artists and their imaginative work. We once attended a Vincent Van Gogh Exhibit in Amsterdam and then ventured out to a small village where he painted a mill (which has a significant role in this film), a corridor of trees, and other landscapes. At the location of each of his subjects there were giant billboards with reproductions of the paintings. They helped us imagine the painter, the place, and the painting afresh. That is exactly what happens in The Mill & The Cross.
Special features on the DVD include "The World According to Bruegel," a documentary about the making of The Mill & The Cross, an interview with Lech Majewski, and trailers and stills for the film.
