the Mill and the Cross

The Mill & the Cross was a better installment last night than the first flick we saw, Outrage. But I was still kind of thrown. I didn't expect what we saw at all. But it was a welcome surprise.

The film is about Breugel's "The Way to Calvary," which is a painting he did in 1564 depicting the passion of the Christ taking place in Breugel's home town. The film goes inside the painting to show you what's happening, as well as showing you Bruegel and his patron discussing the creation of the masterpiece.

The movie is cleverly created by using crazy CGI scans of the real artwork and animating and interlacing that imagery with actors and real locations. The whole flick has a cohesiveness to it, as well as a faithful interpretation of the original painting. If you know Breugel even casually then you immediately pick up on the autumnal color palette and period figures that he was famous for creating. Everyone looks like they just walked out of one of his canvases. It's pretty sweet in that regard.

I didn't expect the lack of dialogue. You could probably fit the entire script on the front of an A4 sheet of paper. It's a very sparse film that lets the action do the talking. I think this is the main reason I didn't "love" this film. It suffered a similar fate to Outrage; you just didn't care about anyone. It felt very hands-off. To a degree what they decided to show was relatively random (considering the hundreds of people in the painting), so nothing in the film became integral to the story. They could have chosen a dozen different people to portray and it wouldn't have changed as long as they kept the miller and Jesus, everyone else was ancillary and replaceable at any time with anyone else.

I dug the parts when Breugel and his patron were discussing the painting. That was genuinely illuminating from an art history perspective. I wanted it to focus on that a lot more. I expected it to.

I'm done writing this review. The flick was pretty good, but don't rush out and trample anyone to see it.
If you're into Breugel then I'd say put it on your queue. But if you're not an art history fag then don't worry about it.