The Mill and the Cross

I don't know that I've seen any film quite like The Mill and the Cross. Written and directed by Lech Majewski, it can be said to be adapted from a painting--Brueghel's 1564 painting The Procession of the Cavalry. Majewski has taken that work, which depicts the procession of Jesus to Golgotha, and made a dream-like film about how it was made and the people who populate it.

The film is certainly visually interesting, in that there are special effects employed so that the people seem to be wandering about on the canvas. But for one raised on narrative, this film left me wanting. My mind frequently wandered, and I had a hell of a time figuring out who was who and what was going on. For example, near the end of the film a man hangs himself. I didn't know who he was, or why he did it.

Simply put, Bruegel (played by Rutger Hauer) saw the rule of the Spanish in his Flanders a parallel to the Romans in the time of Christ, and therefore has the executioners wearing the crimson shirts of the Spanish oppressors. There is also a brutal scene in which the Spaniards break a young Flemish man on the wheel, with ravens pecking out his eyes. The scenes I found most in interesting were those in which Bruegel discusses the composition of the painting, using tips he got from watching a spider build a web.

The film works better in the abstract--a documentary on the DVD discusses the meaning of the painting, and makes the film better in retrospect. I wonder if other paintings could be made into films like this. Certainly The Garden of Earthly Delights, Nighthawks, Guernica. The list is theoretically endless.