The Mill and the Cross
2011 Directed by Lech Majewski
Synopsis
What would it be like to step inside a great work of art, have it come alive around you, and even observe the artist as he sketches the very reality you are experiencing? From Lech Majewski, one of Poland's most acclaimed filmmakers, The Mill and the Cross is a cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece "Procession to Calvary," presented alongside the story of its creation.
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What director Lech Majewski does with this film, drawing inspiration from Michael Francis Gibson's book The Mill And The Cross, is to go inside the very painting itself, exploring and dramatizing the lives of characters depicted on its canvas with the most breathtaking and sumptuous visuals. Bruegel, played by Hauer, is seen too, away from the action, painting the people and discussing the meaning behind their placement within the scene, and explaining how the perspective, and perception of those looking upon it, give it meaning. The film is not just an art history lesson, though time would be well spent viewing the film in high school and college art classes as well as film classes, and it is not just…
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I have certainly never seen anything like this. An incredible recreation of the painting. The film manages to make general peasant life interesting for half the film before the real "action" starts.
I would like to imagine this is the first in a series of films where Rutger Hauer plays a famous artist during the creation of their masterpiece where he would just sit there and explain why what he is doing is important.
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A strange but engaging experience.
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Andrei Rublev, but with spectacular visuals. Embracing the artificiality did the film a service, fitting both the philosophy of the film and the natural aesthetic of the painting itself. The main players emote to perfection, with their faces saying more than the dialogue (which was very sparse anyhow). I will have to say though, if it wasn't for the mesmerizing visuals the movie would've been an otherwise dry affair.
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beautiful
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What director Lech Majewski does with this film, drawing inspiration from Michael Francis Gibson's book The Mill And The Cross, is to go inside the very painting itself, exploring and dramatizing the lives of characters depicted on its canvas with the most breathtaking and sumptuous visuals. Bruegel, played by Hauer, is seen too, away from the action, painting the people and discussing the meaning behind their placement within the scene, and explaining how the perspective, and perception of those looking upon it, give it meaning. The film is not just an art history lesson, though time would be well spent viewing the film in high school and college art classes as well as film classes, and it is not just…
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Majestic cinematography combined with meticulous compositing and a stunning sound mix, the film is a feat of art beyond cinema.
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I have certainly never seen anything like this. An incredible recreation of the painting. The film manages to make general peasant life interesting for half the film before the real "action" starts.
I would like to imagine this is the first in a series of films where Rutger Hauer plays a famous artist during the creation of their masterpiece where he would just sit there and explain why what he is doing is important.
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Bonito como um Bruegel, mas chato.
Beautiful as a Bruegel, but boring. -
A beautiful film with wonderful color. An experience of walking into the painting: "On The Road To Calvary," by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.
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A painting comes to life, and we are taken to comprehend — if elliptically — some of the lives of the people depicted on canvas. This is how we can sum up, quite haphazardly perhaps, Polish filmmaker Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross [2011]. But this is no The Girl with the Pearl Earring. It does not approximate the conceit in narrative that that 2003 film by Peter Webber employed in his giving light to what might have been the story behind the Vermeer painting. Majewski employs something completely different here: an almost surreal fleshing out of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s 1564 painting “The Way to Calvary” [see second photo] that approximates a kind of … mannequin show. I…
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Originally published on October 15, 2011.
Now here’s an inventive concept: a film adapted from a painting, or, perhaps more accurately, set inside a painting. The painting is Pieter Bruegel’s 1564 The Way to Cavalry, in which the artist changed the setting of the Crucifixion to Spain-occupied Flanders as a form of social commentary. What I mean by ‘set inside’ the painting is that we see the people and events that Bruegel depicts come to life -- usually as if imagined by Bruegel, as part of his creative process. And thanks to expertly implemented CGI, each scene actually looks as if it fits with the visual appearance of the original work.
The problem: outside of the sheer visual beauty and…