Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.0

The Mill and the Cross Blu-ray Movie Review

Puts the "art" in art-house.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater January 31, 2012

Equal parts art history lesson and CGI spectacle, political period drama and spiritual meditation, Polish director Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross is a film that's impossible to pigeonhole. At its simplest, it's about the Flemish renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the painting of his 1564 masterpiece, "The Way to Calvary," a surreal landscape dense with subversive imagery. But this is no mere biopic. While there are many films about artists and their inspirations--Andrei Rublev, Basquiat, Girl with a Pearl Earring--The Mill and the Cross goes a step further and actually takes us inside the world of Bruegel's painting, a dualistic world of grim suffering and vivid color, religious persecution and the possibility of redemption.

It's essentially a high-concept, feature-length homage. Majewski (The Gospel According to Harry) brings Bruegel's two-dimensional painting to life in a series of dramatic vignettes and tableaux vivants that explain the symbolism and characters in "The Way to Calvary" while being exceptionally striking in their own right. I imagine the effect is a bit like going to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and staring entranced at the painting until falling into a deep daydream of Inquisitors and crucifixions.

The setting is a hyperbolized version of late-16th century Flanders, which was then ruled by Philip II of Spain, a fervent Catholic who sought to squelch the recent Protestant Reformation by any means necessary. Of course, that included Spain's famed, red-cloaked Inquisitors, who figure prominently here on horseback, snatching up supposed heretics for torture or outright flogging them in the streets. In one early scene, we watch a young married couple going about their morning, buying a few loaves from a breadmonger, picnicking on an idyllic hillside, and--for reasons unexplained--pulling around a sled carrying a cow in a wicker basket. Out of nowhere, the Inquisitors come galloping around a hillside and beat down the husband, tying him to a wagon wheel spread-eagle and then hoisting him into the air on an enormous pole, where he dies slowly from overexposure, one of his eyes pecked out by crows. Later, his wife is buried alive, fearfully protesting as two soldiers hold her down in her grave with the butt end of their spears.

Majewski never tells us what the couple's fatal offense was, but then, it doesn't really matter. What could ever warrant such a cruel penalty? Pieter Bruegel--played by Blade Runner's Rutger Hauer--sees the absurdity in this theologically motivated crackdown and determines to paint a political protest slyly masked as a purely religious, devotional work.

"The Way to Calvary" doesn't lend itself to a brief summary--it features hundreds of figures crammed into a landscape with multiple lines of perspective--but at its most basic it shows Christ carrying his cross through a crowd that seems to ignore him, while his mother, Mary, weeps in the foreground. One either side of the painting there's a tree--the Tree of Life and the Tree of Death--and looming in the center, atop a craggy peak, is the windmill, where, according to Bruegel's breakdown of his own symbolism, the "great miller of heaven" grinds the "bread of life and destiny." By resetting the Passion procession in his present day Flanders, Bruegel subtly recasts its participants--the Roman legionnaires become Inquisitors, and Christ a convicted Protestant.

Majewski expands on this mirroring, literally fleshing out many of the characters in the painting. The Jesus figure becomes a long-haired heretic who's crucified after telling a crowd he would "tear down the Cathedral in three days," while his mother (a rather stoic Charlotte Rampling) soliloquys about the light her son brought into the world. There's even a Judas, who hangs himself after taking his silver betrayal payment, and squabbling soldiers who cast lots for the dead heretic's clothes. We watch as Bruegel gathers inspiration for his painting--"which should be large enough to hold everything," he says--and makes preliminary sketches, working from the center outward, like a spider building a web. Now and then, he confers with his patron, Nicolaes Jonghelinck (Michael York), who's also distressed by the barbarities of the Spanish rule. Much of the film consists of painterly, immaculately composed shots of the peasants engaged in the toil and small joys of daily life. Pieter’s wife feeding their rambunctious brood of children. A minstrel playing a horn. The miller striking up the machinery of his mill. Woodsmen felling a tree that will ultimately be shaped into a crucifix.

It’s not exactly plotless, but story is definitely secondary here. Like another recent Kino-Lorber release, Le Quattro Volte, The Mill and the Cross is highly meditative, moving in quiet rhythms, with long shots and slow camera movements that track across restaged scenes within “The Way to Calvary,” the ornately costumed actors frozen in time as Bruegel wanders through them, observing and sketching. Visually, the film is stunning, carefully color-toned to match Bruegel’s palette, beautifully lit, and digitally assisted with CGI backdrops that recreate the fantastical landscape of the painting. The Mill and the Cross may seem to have been created with art history majors in mind, and it probably won’t appeal to most mainstream moviegoers, but art-house patrons in a contemplative mood will enjoy this guided tour through Bruegel’s world.

The Mill and the Cross Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Since The Mill and the Cross isso dependent on its painterly visuals, it's doubly important that the film be treated with care on Blu-ray. Thankfully, Kino-Lorber's 1080p/AVC-encoded presentation is a total knock-out. I was concerned at first after seeing the film's trailer on another Kino release, as there was some severe banding present in certain fine gradients of color, but there are no substantial compression problems here whatsoever. As you can probably guess by the sheer amount of compositing and layering required in the finished film, The Mill and the Cross was shot digitally--using the Red One camera--and the raw footage was toned in post-production to both match the CGI backdrops and arrive at a convincing Renaissance color palette. It's simply gorgeous. The hues are rich and vibrant--especially reds--and the image in general has a great punchiness, with deep blacks and strong contrast. Clarity is exceptional as well, and almost jarring at times. In most films, using conventional depth of field, normally only a "slice" of the picture is in focus, with the the areas in front and behind that slice going progressively softer. This is simple optics, and if you've ever used a camera before, you know what I'm talking about. In The Mill and the Cross, however, every plane is in focus since each layer of the image was comped in separately. In the actors' faces and the fabrics of their costumes, you'll notice extremely fine high definition texture, especially in close-ups. I can't imagine the film would be nearly as stunning on standard definition DVD.

The Mill and the Cross Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

If you're thinking a film set inside the world of a painting is bound to have lifeless, two-dimensional sound design, think again. The Mill and the Cross features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track that's more than just lively--it's engaging and immersive and sometimes even assaulting. Yes, the film has its share of quiet, meditative stretches, but these are punctuated by hefty, all-surrounding effects that make great use of the surround channels. The thunder of the Inquisitors' horses as they bolt toward you. The cavernously echoing footsteps inside the mill and the the subwoofer-assisted rumble and scraping of the gears being set into motion. The air-splitting crack of whips and the clinking of chains. It all sounds wonderful, vibrant throughout the range and rooted with strong bass, and the recurring theme of the film's score--two women's voices loosely harmonizing--fills in the sonic cracks. The narration and sparse dialogue are clean and balanced as well. I didn't have to touch my remote to adjust the volume once. My only complaint is that there are no subtitle options at all, not even for those who might need an English SDH track.

The Mill and the Cross Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• "The World According to Bruegel" (1080p, 44:40): A 44-minute making-of documentary that includes interviews with director Lech Majewski and actors Rutger Hauer and Michael York. There's a lot of great behind-the-scenes footage here, and the interviews are really informative-- especially when Majewski breaks down the symbolism of the painting--but caution, this doc is almost as slow as the film itself.
• Lech Majewski Interview (1080p, 19:53): Majewski discusses his intent for homage, the similarities between Bruegel and Fellini, and the process of researching the film and scouting locations for landscapes.
• Trailers: Includes high definition trailers for The Mill & the Cross, Film Socialisme, Rapt, The Robber, and City of Life and Death.
• Stills: A high-definition, user-directed gallery with 20 stills.

The Mill and the Cross Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There a plenty of films where paintings come to life--see Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast or Julie Taymor's Frida --but perhaps none so immersive and complete as The Mill and the Cross, in which director Lech Majewski takes us inside Pieter Bruegel's "The Way to Calvary." It's a gorgeous, contemplative film that explores the hows and whys of artistic creation, and as you'd hope, it looks beautiful in high definition. One word of warning: If you've watched Rutger Hauer's other recent film lately, Hobo with a Shotgun , it's hard to keep from imagining him going after the Inquisitors with a pump-action twelve-gauge.