Flanders, 1564: a time of fear and suspicion, where religious minorities are marginalized and persecuted. Callous, power-hungry men hold the government, claiming the Christian faith to justify their vicious actions. Unaccountable agents of state power sow terror and violence throughout the land, even killing people in the streets. It is a dramatic, urgent moment in the nation’s history. But for the great majority of people, life goes on as it always has.
This is the setting of Lech Majewski’s 2011 film ,“The Mill and the Cross,” written by Majewski and Michael Francis Gibson. It tells the story of the great painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Rutger Hauer) and the creation of his famous work “The Procession to Calvary.” In doing so the film explores how art can speak prophetically in troubled times.
“The Mill and the Cross” is light on dialogue, exposition and traditional plot, making it an easier film to discuss than to summarize. Bruegel is our central figure, but he remains largely in the background, just as Christ is concealed in the background of his painting (explaining this choice, he says that the most important things often escape our notice). Occasionally we hear the thoughts of Nicolaes Jonghelinck (Michael York), an art collector friend of Bruegel’s who is outraged by the political upheaval in Flanders, and Mary (Charlotte Rampling), a mother whose son has been sentenced to death. But we spend most of our time with ordinary Flemings going about their lives: working, caring for children, baking their daily bread and occasionally dealing with sudden acts of brutality from red-clad Spanish mercenaries, sent by the king to enforce order.
These are the people who will inspire the hundreds of figures in Bruegel’s painting, which sets the Passion in contemporary Flanders. He blends religious art with social commentary, connecting the suffering of his neighbors with the suffering of Christ. “This could be a group of saints returning from the past to mourn the present fate of Flanders,” he tells Nicolaes.
Majewski evokes the period with rich detail, and the film’s stunning production design and costumery make you feel as if you are in Bruegel’s painting. But this is not simply the story of one moment in history. Instead it speaks to all dark times and the struggle to make sense of them through art and faith.
“If only time could be stayed,” Nicolaes laments. “If it were only brought to a stop. Then we could wrestle the senseless moment to the ground, clearly speak its name to its face and break its power.” This is exactly what Bruegel seeks to do. Oppression moves at a rapid, chaotic pace; it can be nearly impossible to keep track of what is going on, much less formulate a response. Many of us are so consumed by the day-to-day that we barely have the energy to look at the big picture, to imagine what needs to change.
But great art can capture the moment, allowing us to step back, to see it with new eyes, to clarify our objections to the present and our hopes for the future. Sacred art reminds us that our faith can both comfort and challenge us in dark times, lifting us from despair and inspiring us to work for a world closer to the one God desires.
The morning after I watched “The Mill and the Cross” I went to Mass at a parish in Germantown, a largely Black neighborhood of Northwest Philadelphia. A few years back they reimagined their sacred art to better represent the parish community, including a new set of Stations of the Cross painted by Calvin Jones, a local artist. In Jones’s series, the Passion plays out on the streets of a contemporary American city, with Jesus depicted as a young Black man with short dreads. My family sat under the fifth station, “Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the cross,” which is the same event playing out in the foreground of Bruegel’s painting. In Jones’s version, Simon is a middle-aged Black man wearing a black windbreaker, black Crocs and a backwards baseball cap: He could be a resident of the neighborhood. Jones’s art connects what happens on the streets of Philadelphia every day with the sacred story of the Passion. The injustices his community experiences are no less a crucifixion and—the art suggests—his community is no less capable of resurrection.
You can find countless other examples: Salvadoran murals with the crucified Christ dressed as a campesino and military helicopters hovering over Calvary, or Kelly Latimore’s icon “Mama,” a reimagining of the “Pietà,” in which Jesus resembles George Floyd. These works, like Bruegel, do not raise the ordinary to the level of the sacred, but instead reveal the sacred already present in the ordinary. It becomes so easy to shrug off brutality and repression as just the way things are, or business as usual. These works boldly call them what they are: crucifixions—the blasphemous suffering of the innocent, the trampling of God’s beloved poor by the forces of power.
At the end of “The Mill and the Cross,” the camera zooms out of the scene to reveal Bruegel’s finished painting. It continues to pull back until we see the painting hanging on the wall of a present-day museum in Vienna. Bruegel succeeded in freezing the moment, but his work continues to speak to us: inviting us to look at our own times, to make sense of the senseless and to take our place in the ongoing sacred story.
“The Mill and the Cross” is streaming on Kanopy, the free library app.
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