The Mill and the Cross

It's been a good year for me and my love of difficult, contemplative cinema. First there was The Tree of Life and over the weekend I saw The Mill and the Cross by Polish director Lech Majewski. Art historian and critic Michael Francis Gibson had originally asked Majewski to shoot a documentary about Pieter Bruegel's 1564 work The Procession to Calvary but the director did one better by creating a narrative film that explores Brugel's motivations and takes the viewer inside the painting thanks to some imaginative green screen work.

The Mill and the Cross stars Rutger Hauer as Bruegel, the 16th century Flemish painter. As the film opens the painter is wandering an unreal rural landscape with Nicholas Jonghelinck, his patron as played by Michael York. Bruegel discusses his plans for a new painting and the camera pulls back allowing us to see them wandering the landscape of The Procession to Calvary. (For a look at the painting, see here.)

"My painting will tell many stories," the artist tells us. "It should be large enough to hold everything." At the center is a crucifixion but it is off in the distance and thusly small from the viewer's perspective. Furthermore, the man is ignored by most of the people in the painting who simply go about their lives. He will place a mill high atop a small promontory because it will be the miller, he who grinds "out the bread of life and destiny," that shall look down upon the scene instead of God gazing down from the clouds. On the left we see a town encircled by wall – the Wheel of Life. Also on that side is a tree – the Tree of Life. The sky overhead is bright and sunny. On the right we have a gloomy sky and beneath it is a circle of people – the Wheel of Death. A Catherine wheel stands in for the Tree of Death. And there is a Christ figure in the center of the painting bearing his cross and ignored.

There is very little dialogue here. Bruegel outlines his painting, Jonghelinck laments the cruelty of their Spanish overlords, and Charlotte Rampling as Mary ponders the fate of her son. We are left to cull meaning from watching the people that populate Brugel's work live their lives. Two men fell a tree in the woods. A woman with a basket on her head wanders the countryside only to be groped by a lecherous man enjoying the music of a roving musician. In another scene, a young couple finishes breakfast and then loads a calf into a large basket on a sled which they drag out onto the plain. The man is then rounded up by Spanish soldiers clad in crimson and is handed his fate atop that Catherine wheel set on the tree that those men felled. An old couple awaken and, after breaking his fast, the man kicks at a younger man sleeping on the floor who stirs and gets up. He, in turn, walks up a seemingly interminable flight of stairs and sets the mill in motion. In several scenes, the old miller looks at the gears of his machine with pride like God admiring his own handiwork on Earth.

Majewski deftly blurs the line between Bruegel's world and the world of his painting. When he wanders the painting sketching out his ideas, it's easy to say the latter. But when our painter wakes up one morning, he goes into the bedroom where most of his children are sleeping to grab his papers. Outside the window is the mill but it is the depiction of it from his painting. After this, that mill seems to be just off in the distance from every window and doorway. What is Flanders and what is Bruegel's imagination?

The film seemed to me to be ambivalent thematically or, at least, I had trouble making the images conform to any single idea. On the one hand, there is the cruelty. In addition to the man who has his flesh picked at by ravens atop the Catherine wheel, we also witness a woman being buried alive for heresy. And there's the Christ figure hounded by the Spaniards who carries his cross into the center of the painting. On the other hand, there is tenderness such as when a child suckles at its mother's breast. Plus the film is not hesitant when it comes to mirth. When Bruegel leaves that room with his papers, 3 or 4 children erupt from a mass of blankets and pillows on the bed and begin playing. Musicians perform and people dance. There are many stories here. And, high above, the miller alternately watches the gears of his mill churn like the Wheel of Fortune and gazes down on the scene.

The ending of the The Mill and the Cross only served to reinforce the ambivalence in my mind. We watch as throngs of people on a hillside dance to music in a circle. It is an ostensibly joyous occasion until you realize that this is the Wheel of Death that Bruegel noted would appear in his painting.

Bruegel's painting may have been devotional in however an unconventional way for his time, but Majewski seems to use religion as a lens to focus more earthly concerns. At one point, the miller stops the scene below him. People and horses come to a stop in mid-motion. But it was Brugel who gave him the signal to do so. And take that last scene. The Wheel of Death is comprised of joyful people dancing. What does that say about us?