The Mill and the Cross

http://epaper.navhindtimes.in/NewsDetail.aspx?storyid=9649&date=2016-07-17&pageid=1

                                   The Mill and the Cross

‘The Mill and the Cross’ was featured by Sachin Chatte in the Wednesday film club at Sunapranta last week. Wonder of wonders, the film brings three creative arts together – painting, writing and visual arts.  The film is based on the book with the same title by art historian and critic, Michael Frank Gibson, which itself is a lively rendering of his scholarly work dedicated to a sixteenth century painting-  ‘The Way to Cavalry’ by Peter Bruegel. 

It takes the reader close to the painting and unravels the elements of symbolism, aesthetics and allusions in the artwork of the Flemish painter. Gibson’s book and Majewski’s film examine the painting through a magnifying lens, thereby becoming brilliant feats of artistic research and deliverance themselves. Paying a tribute to Bruegel and his spectacular masterpiece in their own ways, they make the renaissance political artwork relevant to contemporary times.

Bruegel (played by Rutger Hauer) was a poet and a painter in sixteenth century Flanders, Netherlands. He was a flaneur who walked amongst the people observing, recording and sketching. His works express his emotional and intellectual connect with the land and its people. “The essence of his artworks like Hunters in the Snow and The Tower of Babel was based on the fact that you can delve into them, you want to touch these people, walk among them. When I look at Hunters in the Snow I hear the crunch of snow, I can feel it in my gums. I can hear the snap of the fire, the yells of people on frozen lakes, crows and ravens, I can feel the icy air,” says Majewski.

Majewski, too, is a poet and painter. He wanted to paint with a video camera and studied film-making.  He became the avant garde of everything that was happening in visual arts. He recognized that Italian filmmaker Michaelangelo Antonioni’s film ‘Blow-up’ was one that came close to such an endeavor, and set out to do something on similar lines. His first film ‘The Knight’ is a nod to renaissance painting. He was amazed by Gibson’s book and decided to make the subject matter (Bruegel’s – Road to Cavalry) a visual gaze that extends beyond a viewing in an art gallery.

Shot mainly in front of a blue screen, the film was put together with a number of CGI graphics and took two years to attain an image as close as possible to the work by Bruegel.

 It became a symbol of cinematic freedom because its prime focus never strayed from the painting. All the shots are contained within its frame to portray a live vibrant life peopled by characters, opening up a whole array of meanings, providing a great deal of knowledge about the painting and its maker, as well as the times in which it was painted.

The film opens with a close shot of the painting and the camera enters the painting taking the viewers along to showcase an evocative picture of peasant life in erstwhile Flanders. Their hard working spirit is mirrored amidst simple moments of indulgence and fun. A group of children alight the screen with their pranks and laughter. But the ever-pervasive shadow of the red-tunic cavalry of the Spanish king pilfering and punishing infidels (heretics- Protestants) casts a darkness of doom and injustice on the pastoral setting. Innocuous men are beaten-up and hoisted on a cross to be preyed upon by birds and half-alive women are buried in open graves.

The commentary and monologues of Rutger Hauer in the film personify Bruegel and highlight the different aspects of the painting developing around the stories of people that he witnesses. His representation of the plight and pain of the peasants in the name of religion and the injustice of the mighty, is wrought against a backdrop of Christian culture since antiquity.

During Bruegel’s days, myths commanded lives of people and their imprint in the arts was discernible. A craggy high rock surmounted by a colossal windmill (Cosmic Mill) represents the universal law of God. The mill owner views the entire scene non-committally perched on a high platform, as the grinders of his mill crush grain ceaselessly.

The unseen Jesus in the middle of the painting carries a cross to Cavalry for his crucifixion and the red-tunic soldiers personify the Roman guard of Pontius Pilate. Thus, the Passion of Christ is superbly juxtaposed with the passion of Flanders, being crucified by the Spanish king’s army, in Bruegel’s days. The sunny side on left of the painting is balanced by the darkness of press of people to the right who have come to witness the crucifixion on the Golgotha hill. The theme of Precession of the Equinoxes is invoked to explain the deep-rooted tradition of passing of ages. The painting conveys binaries of progress and regression in succeeding ages of earth and repeated patterns in the story of mankind.

Another marked feature of the film was expressions of people on way to cavalry – unconcerned and hardened against injustice, lest their remorse should invoke soldiers’ ire. They are inured, moving from one horrifying spectacle to another, preserving their own skin, till time indicts them. Thus, the elements of the painting which appear incomprehensible or unconnected in the beginning, weave themselves into a connected whole at the end of the film.

This creative endeavor by Majewski is an attempt to preserve legacy of art and history for posterity and is a savoury sampling in contemporary times. Sachin’s comment at the end of the film – “How cruel human beings can be” rang in my ears long after it was over. A must watch!