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Such a frustrating disappointment

Purely Joyful Movie!

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An art movie about the 16th century's arts. It was based on the book of the same name which details the landscaper Pieter Bruegel's painting 'The Procession to Calvary'. A movie specially made for classical painting lovers.The movie had very less talkings and everything should be learnt by watching the pictures which depicts painting like series of frames. So there's nothing much to talk about the movie. One of the best ever production designs. Frankly, I was less enjoyed due to lack of knowledge about Bruegel, but glad I saw it and come to know few things about 1500s culture through his paintings.After all, I was not stranger to 'The Procession to Calvary' only by a few weeks before watching this movie. Recently I saw a movie called 'Museum Hours' and it helped a bit to understand this movie. In that movie a guide, an expert briefs in a scene about this painting and the reason behind it.It was a very unique movie, which still won't exactly portray as it had happened. A glimpse about the idea of it might have been like that. More like an imaginary world created behind the magnificent art work. Not suitable for all, especially those who watch movies for entertainment should stay away from it.

Set in Flanders during the 16th century, It is inspired by Peter Bruegel the Elder's 1564 painting The Procession to Calvary. The drama depicts Breugel's creative process conceiving and rendering the painting while life goes on around him: the gentle humour in the pastoral activities of the peasants including Breugel's own family, along with the arbitrary and horrible crucifixion of alleged Protestants by the red-tuniced Spanish Inquisition militia sent from the Vatican.If you're looking for an interesting narrative, action, character development, witty dialogue, or any dialogue at all, you're out of luck. The film is in English, but the amount of melodramatic mutterings from the only 3 English speakers would barely fill a page (all of the rest of the actors are Polish). This film dies on a small screen. If on the other hand, you're able to watch it on the largest possible screen in HD, you're in for a rare treat. The narrative is not what it's about, it's almost entirely about the remarkable imagery.Bruegel was inspired by the work of Hieronymus Bosch, both in his depiction of religious events and his style of rendering. Like Bosch, Bruegel depicted many scenes of human activity within one painting (art as a narrative medium for the illiterate). In The Procession to Calvary, Christ carrying the cross is depicted small in scale, at the centre of the composition, surrounded by many other apparently unrelated groupings. The whole scene is dominated by a mill in the background sitting precariously on an impossible rock perch. Bruegel seems to have been working in the period before the formal rules of perspective entered the visual language of painters. His figures do shrink in size from foreground to background, but the terrain they occupy appears parallel or flat to the picture plane.This quality seems to make it ideal for the director's whimsical depiction of the painting taking shape in the artist's mind: groupings of real figures, all apparently shot in isolation, animate the entire surface of the painting, waiting to be frozen in time by the Bruegel's brush. Seeing the painting briefly in this manner is one of the most charming moments of cinematic art in recent memory.The director doesn't stop there in his use of a Bruegelesque approach to a visual medium Bruegel could't have imagined. There are numerous scenes where the camera gazes steadily on elaborately staged action in the distant background while something else transpires in close up. Both parts are in sharp focus. Trying to achieve this in-camera would present the cinematographer with an impossible depth of field situation. I expect a lot of scenes were carefully staged in this way, to be digitally knitted together in post-production. In every scene the colours and textures are a visual feast and the lighting looks deceptively natural. The costumes are stunning and the production design like a painting by Bruegel.As for the dialogue: this film might have been better without any; maybe a bit of voice-over at best. Rutger Hauer's craggy features make him entertaining enough to watch as Bruegel. He needn't have opened his mouth. Michael York as Bruegel's patron Nicolaes Jonghelinck just looks old and Charlotte Rampling as Mary delivers her standard serenely sad gazes, but is otherwise forgettable.

The Mill and the Cross (2011) The Polish film "The Mill and the Cross" was co-written and directed by Lech Majewski It stars Rutger Hauer as Pieter Bruegel, and co-stars Charlotte Rampling and Michael York.The film consists of an attempt to bring to life Bruegel's 1564 painting, "The Procession to Calvary." I have seen this painting in the Kunsthistoriche Museum in Vienna. Once you've seen it, you don't forget it, because it is filled with people and action. (Although, in the painting, Jesus has just collapsed under the weight of the cross, so, in a sense, action has been frozen for a few seconds.)The painting is also remarkable for a very strange symbol--a windmill placed high atop a stony crag. In the film, Bruegel explains that the miller looks down from his mill and sees everything that is happening below, just as God looks down from heaven and can see everything. So, the mill and the miller work symbolically. However, in a practical sense, the mill would never be that high on an large, steep, stony crag. If a mill were really in that location, no one could bring the wheat to the mill or take away the flour. The other dominant vertical structure is a cartwheel, raised high on a long pole. This was the device used by the Spanish rulers of the Netherlands to execute and display prisoners. The prisoner was tied to the wheel, and the wheel was hoisted far up in the air. The device prevented anyone from helping the person--if alive--or removing the body. Only the carrion birds could reach the body, which they did, with predictable results.Technology in the 21st Century makes everything possible, so it's no surprise that the painting is reproduced in the film in a real landscape. Sometimes all the figures are frozen, but other times you can see a cow moving or some other action taking place. The special effects are routine by now, but the manner in which they are used is not routine.We really have the sense that we are looking at a landscape, and the artist is putting it down on canvas before our eyes. This is a highly creative way to look at life the way an artist sees it, and then look at the way life is transformed and committed to canvas.We saw this film on the large screen at the excellent Rochester Polish Film Festival. It really will work better in a theater. However, if that's not an option, it's worth seeing on DVD.

This is simply a fake.Nothing close to Bruegel whatsoever. Bruegel's colors are transparent and clear, lighting is soft. He applied thin layers of paint to achieve this effect. In the movie, on the contrary, colors are running rampant in the most tasteless computer generated sort of way.Bruegel's palette is certainly not bright. Maybe the director had Flemish 15th century art with its bright colors in mind? But no, he didn't. Flemish masters used glazing to let the light travel through multiple layers of paint to achieve marvellous illusions of tangibility and depth. In the movie though, the colors seem to be borrowed from a candy store. Bold and artificial. Everything in this film is digitally enhanced but acting. Acting is a pure zero while the visuals are a zero digitally enhanced.The lighting indoors reminds of Caravaggio at best, but it's way too crude. The first scene with the lovers is lit with Caravaggio in mind but the director decided to throw in a bit of Flemish Art. Hence a brightly lit window. Unfortunately, the result is a caravagesque painting torn and another one, Flemish, visible through a hole.So, what's this film about? Spanish oppression. Well, with no plot, no acting, no drama it's a worthless comment. About the recreation of Bruegel's famous painting? No way. The painting is shown in the movie and it's obvious that it has nothing to do with it artistically. Well, even though out of place, could it be on Barogue art? The lighting indoors is certainly meant to be Baroque. That can be true but than the director has not succeed. If you are interested in Baroque, there are quite a few infinitely better films. Even an entertaining and unpretentious "Alatriste" succeeded in recreating Velasquez way better than "The Miller and the Cross" in recreating anything.This film is nothing but European artsy pop junk. Will there be an end to artsy directors fooling the public? I gave the movie two stars because at least some viewers might get interested in Pieter Brugel's art after seeing a "Road to Calvary" painting.