An astonishing work of cinematic invention, The Mill and the Cross is director Lech Majewski’s exploration of Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting The Way to Calvary, breathtakingly mixing live action and computer-generated effects to literally bring the famed artwork to life. As Bruegel (Rutger Hauer) sketches out the compositions for the painting, Majewski’s camera plunges deeply into the world it depicts: a sixteenth-century Flanders under brutal Spanish occupation, pointedly overlaid with Bruegel’s rendering of Christ’s Passion. Drawing out several of Bruegel’s more than 500 painted figures and weaving their stories of everyday routine, injustice and tragedy into the Christian allegory at the painting’s centre, Majewski both pays homage to a masterpiece and expands upon it in dazzling ways.
