by Peter Menkin
Charlotte Rampling
THE REVIEW OF THE MILL & THE CROSS
How can I laud this film I liked so much, and enjoyed? Let me try a number of ways. For this is a movie that asks for many things of its audience. This film is a work of art.
Called the wisest philosopher among painters, “Pieter Bruegel’s epic masterpiece The Way To Calvary depicts the story of Christ’s Passion set in Flanders under brutal Spanish occupation in the year 1564, the very year Bruegel created his painting. From among the more than five hundred figures that fill Bruegel’s remarkable canvas, THE MILL & THE CROSS focuses on a dozen characters whose life stories unfold and intertwine in a panoramic landscape populated by villagers and red-caped horsemen. Among them are Bruegel himself (played by Rutger Hauer), his friend and art collector Nicholas Jonghelinck (Michael York), and the Virgin Mary (Charlotte Rampling).” So says the distributor about the film they distribute, Kino Loberer of New York City.
Before going further with some remarks on the film as a work itself and its credits, note that the part played by Rutger Hauer is done with dignity and offers a stoic painterly attitude of heroic disengagement with the large scene he paints. A handsome man, the character played by Rutger Hauer, Bruegel himself does as the other actors do: plays the role with a balance of speaking and silence, with emphasis on the silence. Quiet in dialogue, that is silent moments, is a notable feature of the playing style in The Mill & The Cross. Here is a well chosen means of conveying meaning as audience members become attuned to the rhythm of acting style performed by not only this excellent player, but all the competent and experienced main players in their parts. There is a shadow and light to the acting sensibility, not in literal use of cinema and play of film, but a kind of sensibility of both knowing and not knowing. But it is Rutger Hauer’s character who appears as a man who has eyes to see and a distance in objectivity in mind to patiently portray what his eye sees, if one grasps the painting as shown in the style of the cinema itself.
Michael York as nobleman
Suffice it to say: working in a dramatic and stylized way of silence, quiet, and what turned out to be effective and creative as well as courageous methods, actors, cinematographer, and director brought to life this painterly vision with cinematic success. A film well worth seeing, just to say one has seen it, let alone appreciate it and to enjoy (especially if the art of the painter and the art of the actor, and the art of the director interests or even fascinates a theatre goer), the first thing this writer did when seeing the film and taking notes was write a poetic statement of description:
Beautiful: Fabulous vista of morning./ The unchanging and august scene/ Portrays the Mill as started on awakening, as if / God , and man in the hopes and struggles /Take on the day, knowing or not knowing God/ Is present and aware of dawning, its maker both /Engaged and distant watching, too, as Christ weeps./ / So injustice of man against man in the acts/ Of Christ’s passion and his suffering on the Cross/ Are known in the present time of Flanders 1500,// The ravens set on the man persecuted by man/ In the cinematic cruel and even graphic scene of black/ Ravens eat his eyes./ Painting, cinema, history meet at the Cross.
–Peter Menkin
Take this writer and reviewer’s advice, see this movie on the big screen—if you can. If not, view it at home on the biggest screen you’ve got in rumpus room, living room, or bedroom. Of course there is vulgarity in the film, that commonality of the unwashed and washed, so heightening in its contrast the beauty of the vision–(has not man a vulgar dimension of humanity baldly lived); this is portrayal of the bawdy sense of the way life in this era of Spanish occupation as Catholics persecuted the heretical religious Protestants. (Is not the basic sensibility of man in his passions and failures a beautiful thing, caught with the cinematography and also the director’s eyes so well and well told in this movie of mankind and his life in history? Here is mankind’s beauty without just prettiness, yet prettiness is present, too. That itself is reason to say, Yes, well stated to The Mill & The Cross as entertainment and cinematic art.)
As this review comes towards the end, this writer wants to reiterate: that there is passion and pathos, weakness and sorrow is a chilling fact of history shown in this tableaux so artfully presented and patiently played. Take notice, Christ’s Cross continues then, is given meaning and life and actively a living thing and event both then and now in the world. Christ is alive, if only it is the Cross we see in its various guises. That Christ’s Cross continues is just so much the more terrible in what is a tasteful movie that does not exploit its graphic portrayals that appear from time to time, nor does it understate too much the subtleties of the painter’s world and the events of living in the world of its day—and in doing so casts a meaning to present life as humans live life. For example: I write here of an interesting scene where Michael York, playing nobleman, watches Spanish soldiers ride down the street of his town from his window. There is a mutual understanding of strain, occupation, political injury and just plain tension portrayed in this scene. Let me compliment the film again so to help to bring understanding and enjoyment to a viewer’s visit to the theatre: For me, this scene is another experience of movie in the better sense. Look for the subtlety and the artist’s sensibility. In fact, once noticed, it may strike an audience member so strongly as to resonate for some weeks afterward. How well the silence works in this scene as we see Michael York as Nicholas Jongehelinch watch the soldiers ride in a kind of triumph and comfortable power that terror can offer in its deceptive way.
Just a few notes on acting: This writer says again, the silence and then use of sound and also spoken voice to give lines works so well. Charlotte Rampling in this movie as “Mary” does so well in her part, with a dignity and sorrow that is noteworthy with empathy. After all, it is her son who will be among the crucified, and in a later scene where he is put on the Cross of the soldiers dressed in Red, she comes to the foot of that Cross with others, and the scene is a stunner. At least this writer found it moving and quite a picture in itself. No, it was not a graphic scene of blood, but a scene of waiting and witness, a scene of quiet and sunset, a scene of sorrow and even despair.
For my money, the movie is for adults. Question: Can a mature young boy or girl of high school or college years enjoy and understand the work? Of course, for, they, too, must read books of real literary and artistic merit in school. They, too, must begin to come to grips with their own lives and the spiritual and religious dimensions of history and of our contemporary times. This kind of historic statement of its kind, whether understood in its religious and Christian sense or not, will help with its theme of humanity for mature and even younger, mature viewers. But parental advice is recommended for teenagers in high school. Important criteria for any who view this film: Come to The Mill and the Cross with a mind educated or at least asking for cinematic experience. For those who wish to see history caught in film as wrought in a painting, come to The Mill & The Cross. I viewed the screening at the Embarcadero Theatre in San Francisco and afterward talked with Caria Tomczykowska, President of The Polish Arts and Culture Foundation, located in Oakland, California. She was kind enough to set up an interview with the Director of the film.
Produced and directed by Lech Majewski; written by Michael Francis Gibson and Mr. Majewski, based on the book by Mr. Gibson; directors of photography, Mr. Majewski and Adam Sikora; edited by Eliot Ems and Norbert Rudzik; music by Mr. Majewski and Jozef Skrzek; production design by Katarzyna Sobanska and Marcel Slawinski; costumes by Dorota Roqueplo; released by Kino Lorber. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of the Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. This film is not rated.The distributor reviews its own film with these words about the ending: “At the film’s end we see the painting, some of its mysteries revealed, hanging next to Bruegel’s equally masterly “Tower of Babel” in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; we are also left to savor an inspiring, alluring meditation about imagery and storytelling, the common coin of history, religion and art.”
The Crucifix/ moment and moments in time/ man’s experience with life’s sorrow/ the multitudes and all the human appetites of living/ goes on.// Shall we dance? And shall we speak? Shall we be silent and shall we wait with God as we may?/ Let history play our songs in this vista of time and memory that is life.
–Peter Menkin
INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR LECH MAJEWSKI
- 1. In your film The Mill & The Cross the vision is one of a series of levels offered in painterly tableau, given to dramatic form. This writer thought it a stunning and effective use of a painting as inspiration. Will you tell us something of your own sense of the visual levels at work, and what manner of style you call the actors’ interpretation? In what way did you offer a filmic dramatic mode in presenting this movie, so well suited for the big screen because of its beauty? I know I am almost asking you to critique your own work, but really, some insight of your vision will help the audience better appreciate your work.
Director of The Mill & The Cross, Lech Majewski with friend at lunch in San Francisco. Mr. Majewski, a Polish Citizen, is holding the camera
Initially my image was of nobody moving for an hour and a half. Only the camera would travel. Almost like entering the painting itself in the world Bruegal has presented. The viewer would eavesdrop on the painting.
- 2. Tell us something of the way you decided to handle the violence in the film, for there is some cruelty, even some blood and graphic visual representation? To give some context, movies today are so violent, and sometimes vulgar, even sexually exploitative for the purpose of titillation, it is surprising to find a film where the bawdiness is in context with the message and moves the drama forward.
It has to be like…Breugal presents the picture. People are cruel and they are joyous. It has to do with the joux de vive. Basically, when you look at the people…they don’t pose in front of you. You have the sense you are looking over their shoulder. It is like a Peeping Tom. They are so enrapt in their idiosyncratic actions.
They do their own routines, and you spy on them. They don’t wait for you, so to say. They are sort of presenting themselves. They have an eye contact with you; it is an official kind of a contact. With Breugal’s world you jump in with the characters in the band wagon. When you have a posed portrait of people it is a kind of official contact, or a contact that makes it remote despite the fact that they look into your eyes.
- 3. Of the three main actors in their character, I am curious about the quiet performance of Charlotte Rampling. Perhaps because she plays a Mary figure, but also because there is a silent sorrow to the movie that she and the others give. Who among the collaborators developed this almost silent statement of ethos in the portrayals? Was it mostly your work; do you think the cinematography enhanced this vision—as I do? For the film work is near exquisite, so painterly.
I’m a painter, so for me that is very important. I was invited to…Bruegal’s world, also to the Beugal’s aesthetic. So I tried to meet him on my own ground. I know I am coming to him with my film equipment. I am coming to learn, not to show off.
The actors had a very difficult task, for it was the most difficult task. For either the actor is to be a guide, or a silent presence. Actors like to act a lot, they like to have a meaty part where they can use their emotional memory and have a kind of showcase of what they can do. Here the restraint was the utmost restraint. They had to restrain their work. I am glad I met Michael York and Charlotte Rampling. The work was [by] them.
Michael York is a great person. Initially, I thought he would be silent, too. He quickly memorized his lines. It occurred to me he should speak his lines. He was going to be silent, and I listen to his silent thoughts. Again, how difficult it is to be an actor—you don’t act, you have to relay certain knowledge and relay some meaning. It is very hard to act.
- 4. Speak some about the artist, the painting and also of the setting of the movie. By this I mean tell us the historic place in time, and what is going on in this time of Catholic and Protestant strife and occupation by the Spanish. There is so much story in the film, and the viewer has the opportunity to unwrap the story as a viewer would unwrap a painting. Tell us something about this audience participation, if you agree with the statement.
Very important thing I wanted to say about this movie. I don’t like a movie that explains to me too much. I decided to write it with in such a way that Breugal, Howard and Michael York and Charlotte can do it in a basic field. If you want to understand it more, you have to do the homework.
We have Spaniards who are Catholic who are trying to convert the Protestants to repeat the same actions that were used against the Christ. It has a double meaning. Many people treat it as a passion of Christ. It is also a passion of Christ; that is, it is a double edged sword. This is a passion of Chris and a torture in the name of Christ…A thing can turn into its opposite.
The human tends to distort the human [good] into its opposite. [In the film} there are basically two tortures: one is performed on the wheel, the other on the Cross. Geometrically speaking there is the circle and the Cross-- like a point in the earth where you are…like the Cartesian world. It was also a part of the planning of the movie. If the rock is a vertical line and the rock is also a symbol of the petros, and at the same time [also as symbol] a hollow rock like Moses’ on the desert–Petro pneumatica, which is a hollow rock that accompanied Moses and the Jews.
It is a beautiful axiomatic statement. That is what Breugal painted. If you look closely you’ll see there are windows in the rock. On the left side of the axis you have the wheel; on the right side you have the cross.
INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL YORK
- 1. For some years now this writer has enjoyed your audio recording originally produced by Dove Audio in Los Angeles of the Psalms. Talk to us a little of the Psalms, since many of us say them in Church and on our own. Which of the Psalms have you found read best aloud? Why? Give us some tips on reading aloud, and tell us something of the interpretive method you use in reading the Psalms. Speak even of if you read in the Monastic tradition, as do I, or other.
Michael York with wife Pat, photo by Michael Kirkland
I think so much of this literature was designed to be read aloud. It’s the way it’s constructive…appointed to be read in Churches. So this language does come aloud when read in Churches.
Fortunately all the Psalms are different. They deal with the human experience of God: so you have joy, hope, despair, ecstasy: All these human elements. They are not cast in the same mold. Actually, I just recently worked on a new audio version of a Bible. It’s called the Word of Promise. It took two years to record; I spent over 500 hours in the studio. [It] had all these wonderful actors: Richard Dreyfus, Joan Allen, Harry Hamlin. It was a [wonderful] cast: Marsha J. Hardin, Gary Sinise, Stacy Keech. I mean a huge number. I was the one who stitched it all together. I was very pleased to read the entire Bible. It had always been an ambition.
It’s available online. It’s hugely successful. It’s got its own score. It’s got its own sound effects. In a way it’s using technology in the same way Lech Majewski used it in the movie [The Mill & The Cross]. Out of this [Bible] they produced an album of Psalms called The Gift of Psalms. This is the multi-voice version I thought [previously] would work very well. You just go to Amazon.com [to find and buy it]… It’s been flying off the shelves. The price has come down. It’s quite reasonable. I’m just so thrilled the DVD is still available. This was from about 2007 to 2009.
- 2. This writer’s understanding of your work as a lover of art leads me to want to know what is there special about the cinematic work of director Lech Majewski in his film The Mill & The Cross where you play an art collector named Nicholas Jonghelinck. In that wonderful painting which is depicted in so fine a filmic tableau in the movie Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s painting “The Way to Calvary,” is there a particular part of the painting you’d like to draw the reader’s attention to when viewing this beautiful and remarkable vision that plays the passion effectively in Flanders of the 1500’s?
I always knew that Lech was a film maker and an artist. You know he had a reputation. He had exhibitions in the [Modern] Museum of Art. He co-wrote the screenplay of the artist Dasquiag. I just thought the screenplay was extraordinary. I knew it would be difficult to do. He was entering into a world where he didn’t know if he would be able to pull it off: The complexity of the digital technology he was using.
[Regarding Michael York as art collector, he says:] Thank goodness I started collecting in the 70s. I don’t know if I could do it now. Things were undervalued then. Old masters. I couldn’t do it now. I am an art lover. My wife and I go once a week to a museum.
[Regarding advice on looking at Bruegal’s work depicted in the film as painting:] Not really. Breugal doesn’t…he has 500 characters in there. They are all doing something individual. You would think that Christ would be the whole centerpiece. Indeed he is; there is a man on a horse wearing a white suit. And this is where the eye goes to.
[Regarding the interpretative method used in explaining religious aspect of the painting, The Prodigal Son:] In museums I tend to avoid the audio guides. I like to see for myself and make up my own mind. If you are reasonably educated, you can make up your mind itself. It shouldn’t be dictated things, but suggested things.
I see [in the Breugal] the paining like a piece of cinema. There’s action going on all the time. There is a time scale. On the left side of the picture it starts in the day; on the right side of the film it becomes dark with Golgotha and Calvary. It’s not one specific time; it’s timeless.
- 3. One thing that this viewer noticed when attending the screening in San Francisco at the Embarcadero One, which is a large two building complex (where I lost my car in the lot when wanting to go home after the screening), is how wonderfully the movie plays on the big screen. For that reason, do you think the film better to see in big screen at a movie theatre, and why? Also, your presence is quite established in the viewer’s mind as character of a man whose country is occupied. Obviously, the character is a more mature man, and you are not so young yourself anymore. How do you like and how do you play such a role of so distinguished and educated a character, who has to have a certain kind of expression to show his position in life and even in silence communicate his artful sensitivity and loves?
If you can see it on the big screen, that’s preferable. I really think movies playing on airplanes…I know the cameraman has made the best picture and light, and you know the people are not truly getting the kind of experience [the cameraman worked to achieve]. Now people want to watch films on their telephones. God forbid. I’m not sure I approve.
[Regarding Michael York’s scene in the film The Mill & The Cross where his character laments the occupation by the Spanish:] Originally, it was all voice over. I learned the speech. When he [the director] found out I knew it, he completely invented the scene. From a passive voice over, it became a speech. The man didn’t have to turn to his wife, as married couples don’t always turn to see one another when speaking. It made a nice scene. It wasn’t in the movie [as it appeared, not originally]. There is of course the equivalency of the Spanish inquisition and the Redcoats. It’s the equivalent to the Jewish…the Roman Occupation and the cruelty. Any country that’s invaded, the invaded citizens have a point of view. Especially [when] they become wealthy and so independent.
- 4. How do you like being more mature in years as a man and as an actor? If memory is correct, you are not yet 70, having been born in England in 1942? Certainly, you have a long and distinguished working life in theatre, film, and audio and have as a man of faith played roles that are a part of Western Civilization in many instances. Talk to us some of your own faith, and if in some sense this film The Mill & The Cross as both art and story in history–show us something of religious life and matters of faith during this time?
It’s wonderful. This is a job that has no cutoff. You keep doing it till you can’t: Until doors are closed on certain roles. The younger roles are cut off for me. Then I started playing fathers, and now I play grandfathers.
I was raised in The Church of England, so that glorious language that informs the liturgy of the Church of England. And of course the King James Bible. I’ve explored faith in its many aspects [in roles I’ve played]. I’ve played John the Baptist, and the anti-Christ… Good people like Dietrich Boenhoeefffer. And recently, a couple of years ago doing something. They asked me if I’d like to be the on-camera narrator of John Paul II. The present Pope Benedict wanted this film made, so he put the Vatican at our disposal. I spent a day in the Sistine Chapel with light on [the ceiling]. It was unforgettable.
You can’t hope to do good things all the time. In my job you can’t know how things are going to turn out. That’s why The Mill & The Cross is such a big, big breakthrough. I count myself lucky to do it.
[On being asked if he is an observant Christian:] I wouldn’t say I was a practicing Christian, except internally. In my reading and my …but I don’t often go to Church. But when I do I enjoy.
- 5. Thank you for taking the time to talk to this writer about your work and the movie The Mill & The Cross. As we come to the end of our conversation in interview, speak about director Lech Majewski’s vision of art, and what it was like to work with him in this unusual, artistic, and interpretive movie that is so stylized? Did you feel that your playing of the character Nicholas Jonghelinck was stylized, too–in any distinct way?
For the most part we were playing against a blue screen. We just had to imagine where we were. We had to invent where we were seeing, because we were in an empty studio. This film had its European premier in the Louvre in France. So I think they recognized its quality. It’s about a specific religious episode. It’s so very dark. I was so surprised when your assistant said it was so violent. You couldn’t have something more violent than the crucifixion. [Left out a reference to the film about the Crucifixion that was famous for being bloody, etc. and graphic. Sorry. Missed this in typing.] This was the inquisition and it was so historically accurate.
We see soft medievalism from Disney. But life was brutal and tough.
- 6. As mentioned just a moment ago, it is good to make your acquaintance in this way. If there is something this writer has missed that you want to say, or if you have a comment you want to make, please let readers know about it here.
I think we’ve covered so much ground. As an actor, I look forward to what lies ahead. There is no blueprint. You just feel so lucky when there’s some subject…like The Mill & The Cross comes your way.
THE CREDITS FOR THE MILL & THE CROSS
CREDITS
Directed and Produced by
Lech Majewski
Screenplay
Michael Francis Gibson, Lech Majewski
Inspired by the book THE MILL AND THE CROSS by Michael Francis Gibson
Executive producer
Angelus Silesius
Line producers
Małgorzata Domin, Piotr Ledwig
Co-producers
Telewizja Polska
Freddy Olsson
Bokomotiv Filmproduktion
Odeon Studio
Silesia Film
24 Media
Supra Film
Arkana Studio
Piramida Film
Directors of Photography – Lech Majewski, Adam Sikora
Costume Designer – Dorota Roqueplo
Production Designers – Katarzyna Sobańska, Marcel Sławiński
Makeup Designers – Dariusz Krysiak, Monika Mirowska
Music – Lech Majewski, J—zef Skrzek
Editors – Eliot Ems, Norbert Rudzik
First Assistant Directors – Krzysztof Łukaszewicz, Dorota Lis
New Zealand Cloud Formations Photographed by John Crisstoffels
Sound Recordist – Marian Bogacki
Costume Supervisor – Ewa Kochańska
Makeup Artist -Hanna Leśna
Art Director – Stanisław Porczyk
Draftsman/Storyboard Artist – Jerzy Ozga
Visual Effects – Odeon Film Studio
Visual Effects Supervisor – Paweł Tybora
Flame Artist – Łukasz Głowacz
3D Animation – Mariusz Skrzypczyński
Lead Compositors – Dawid Borkiewicz, Waldemar Mordarski
IT Engineer – Kamil Lenard
Additional Visual Effects – Katamaran
Compositing Artist – Norbert Rudzik
2D Matte Paintings – AWR Edytor Katowice
Digital Paint Artist – Barbara Lepacka
Landscape Design – Lech Majewski
Additional Visual Effects – Rosenbot, Wojciech Łebkowski,
Artur Kopp, Piotr Kierzkowski
First Assistant Editor – Maciej Krzan
Sound Designers – Lech Majewski, Zbigniew Malecki
Sound Supervisor – Zbigniew Malecki
ADR Recordist – Aleksander Dowisilas
Foley Artist – L.J. May
Additional Sound FX – Jan Walencik
Sound Mix Engineers – Zbigniew Malecki, Piotr Knop
Music Recorded at Polskie Radio Katowice
Laboratory – WFDiF Warsaw
TECHNICAL SPECS
35mm: 1.85 (24 fps) Dolby Digital SRD
DCP: 1.85 Dolby Digital
HDCAM 1080 / 23.98psf 16 x 9 Full Frame (aka 1.78) Stereo
Length 35mm 24fr/sec 97′, DCP/HDCam 25 fr/sec 91
World premiere:
Sundance Film Festival
Yarrow Hotel Theatre
Egyptian Theatre
Holiday Village Cinema II
European premiere: Rotterdam Film Festival
French premiere: The Louvre, Paris
PETER BREUGEL’S PAINTINGS
KUNSTHISTORICHES MUSEUM MIT MVK & OTM
Kreuztragung Christi, CG 1025 (The Way to Calvary)
Jager Im Schnee (Winter), CG 1858 (The Hunters in the Snow)
Selbstmord Sauls, CG 1011 (The Death of Saul)
Der Dustere Tag, CG 1837 (The Dark Day)
Turmbau Zu Babel, CG 1026 (The Tower of Babel)
Heimkehr Der Herde, CG 1018 (The Return of the Herd)
THE COURTAULD INSTITUTE OF ART
(Rights & Reproductions Courtauld Images)
The Flight into Egypt
HESSICHES LANDESMUSEUM DARMSTADT
WISSENSCHAFTLICHER VOLONTAR KUNST & KULTUR GESCHICHTE
Elster Auf Dem Galgen, GK 165 (The Magpie on the Gallows)
THE CAST
Peter Breugel
Rutger Hauer
Mary
Charlotte Rampling
Nicholas Jonghelinck
Michael York
Marijken Breugel – Joanna Litwin
Saskja Jonghelinck – Dorota Lis
Crucified – Bartosz Capowicz
Wheelified – Mateusz Machnik
Miller – Marian Makula
Netje – Sylwia Szczerba
Jan – Wojciech Mierkulow
Esther – Ruta Kubas
Simon – Jan Wartak
Peddler – Sebastian Cichonski
Bram – Lucjan Czerny
Mayken – Aneta Kiszczak
Horn Player – Oskar Huliczka
Traitor – Adam Kwiatkowski
Pedro De Erazu – Pawel Kramarz
Rogier De Marke – Tadeusz Kwak
Scharmouille – Andrzej Jastrzab
Thief – Josef Barczyk
Miller’s Wife – Bernadetta Cichon
Millhand – Krzysztof Lelito
Pitje – Jerzy Sucheki
Beta – Emilia Czartoryska
Wero – Agata Kokosinska
Magdah – Tatiana Juszniewska
Josef – Dariusz Lorek
Smith – Miroslaw Fuchs
Waggoner – Stanislaw Futek
Archer – Grzegorz Kazibudzki
This article appeared originally in Church of England Newspaper, London.
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