I just saw this film as part of the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival in a screening at SFMOMA. What a work of art! A clear labor of love, this layered re-telling of the significance of, and meaning in Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece, "The Way to Calvary" is one of the finest embodiments of a canvas brought to life I have ever seen. Rutger Hauer is Pieter Bruegel, Sir Michael York is his patron, and the mesmerizingly beautiful Charlotte Rampling is the Virgin Mary. The unnamed figures in the painting (well over 100) are brought to life, and what a life it must have been in the 16th Century. Simple and with clear order, yet brutal and harsh. Not only is "The Mill and the Cross" a re-creation of the painting it is 16th Century Flanders (as Bruegel saw it). The film also acts as a Passion Play, and given I saw it Easter Weekend it couldn't have seemed more appropriate.
Review of The Mill and the Cross
