Andrew reviews The Mill and the Cross.
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| "My name is Simon and I like to do drawings." |
With most art classes, lectures and museum tours,
the professor or resident guide will impart to his pupils at some point
the best way to understand an artist is to lose yourself within their
paintings. This could mean studying
their work for hours on end or researching their lives through biographical
renderings, either literary or cinematic. If you stare at a painting long enough, your mind may deceive you into
thinking what you're seeing has movement.
Further still, the image itself might not be completely abstract and
possibly has an underlying sociopolitical purpose.
In an attempt answer the questions of the
validity of art and give life to the period with which the painting was
illustrated, Polish artist and first-time director Lech Majewski transports us
quite literally inside a 16th century painting with his art-history
hybrid The Mill and the Cross.
Rendered
with elaborate CGI and period costumes, The Mill and the Cross creates
an entire world and society of 16th century Flanders as imagined by
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Rutger Hauer) with his subversive take on the
crucifixion, The Way to Cavalry.
Loosely based on a biography by Michael Francis Gibson with Majewski's
own visual interpretation, the film's locus is The Way to Cavalry with
many of its inhabitants carrying out their daily lives. The film is loaded with static yet sublime
vistas casually mixing presently shot footage of people with elaborate
backgrounds drawn directly from The Way to Cavalry. Not since Akira Kurosawa's Dreams and
it's Crows segment with a young Kurosawa running through the painted
landscapes of Vincent Van Gogh has a film come this close to bringing a still
painting to vivid, organic life.
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| "Up on these stilts, I can't smell Rutger Hauer at all." |
Throughout
the film, we pull back to Bruegel in the act of sketching his masterwork,
explaining its purpose carefully to wealthy patron Nicholaes Jonghelinck
(Michael York). Bruegel explains
contrary to ordinary renderings of the crucifixion, God will take the place of
the miller, with his heavenly mill atop a high mountain regarding the lives
below. Intended to comment on social
indifference to violence of the period such as the Spanish militia and its
frequent murder of Protestants, the painting and film stage the crucifixion
within the middle of the madness. It's
as though Bruegel is saying the world has forgotten Christianity and it is
man's nature to be violent and cruel. At
the same time, however, Majewski suggests with Christ rising on the third day
there is still hope for humanity and goodness.
Without spoiling plot details of this overtly plotless cinematic swan
dive into the heart of The Way to Cavalry, The Mill and the Cross ends
inside a museum to regard the actual painting firsthand. While at the end of the day it's just a
painting to stare at and regard, Majewski prefaced this reminder with a truly
unique journey into what the world depicted within it may have looked and felt
like.
Average
moviegoers will find this deliberately slow paced meditation on the meaning of
artistic expression painfully dull or flat in terms of dynamic
storytelling. Whether this unique
retelling of the crucifixion as seen through the painting of an important 16th
century artist is your cup of tea or not depends on your patience and penchant
for lush, impossibly beautiful vistas.
Then again, anyone aspiring to be an artist will find this deep
investigation into the heart of The Way to Cavalry to be an awe
inspiring experience and a valuable lesson on the interpretation of art. To many, it will simply be another image in
the age of our ever increasing interactivity.
But to others, The Mill and the Cross speaks to the notion of
modern art's inextricable link to life itself and the importance of art's
contribution to history. It's also, for
all intents and purposes, one of the most beautiful films you will ever lay
eyes on, period.
-Andrew Kotwicki