The Mill & the Cross

The story isn’t the point, nor is the dialog. The Mill & the Cross is a visual poem, a deep dive into one particular painting and making it come to fully realized life. Words don’t entirely matter in the face of such stunning imagery, and the film works best when you consider it as a fever-dream of swirling lights and colors.

The film stars Rutger Hauer as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the painter behind The Procession to Calvary, Michael York as his patron, and Charlotte Rampling as Mary, Bruegel’s mother and model for the Virgin Mary in the painting. To say that they “star” is something of a misnomer, as the film really stars the painting, going into detail on some of the people caught in their daily lives who found themselves immortalized in the work, or imagining some of those who may have posed for it. Hauer, York, and Rampling contain the most dialog in their scenes, this mostly consists of them providing expository background details on the era or the goals of the work.

Numerous times throughout the film, the actors and extras seem to be walking straight out of the painting. And while many of the visuals are hypnotic and perfectly realized, a few, it must be said, are the obvious work of green screen and have the actors sitting on top of the backgrounds in an inorganic way. This is a minor complaint, as they only announce themselves when compared to the fluidity and beauty of the rest. The Mill & the Cross is a quiet, meditative examination of a work of art and its creation, and it is a glorious film to be enraptured within.