scene from Mill and the Cross; photo - lechmajewskiart pl

Although it’s fitting that a film evoking the Crucifixion has found its way into Polish cinemas for Easter, few in the movie world were prepared for the startling originality of Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross, which premiered at the Sundance Festival earlier this year.

Report by our Krakow correspondent Nick Hodge

Starring Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York in the key roles, the film conjures up Pieter Bruegel’s celebrated canvas The Procession to Calvary (1564), and it has proved a roaring success with Polish critics.

International film trendsetting Variety magazine has hailed the work as “an extraordinary imaginative leap,” suggesting that the movie “could prove the Polish helmer’s international breakthrough.”

Lech Majewski was in Poland to open both the film and an accompanying exhibition at the National Museum in Krakow, and I caught up with him during a book launch on the Market Square, where the director reflected on his inspirations for the movie.

Stepping inside the canvas

It turns out that the director fell under the spell of Bruegel while still a child, as Majewski discovered the painter during trips to Venice to stay with his uncle.

Whilst on the way, the family would always stop in Vienna, where the main attraction was the sweeping Kunsthistorisches Museum, which boasts an entire room of Bruegels.

“I lived in those paintings,” Majewski revealed. “To me, they were much more interesting than cinema.”

Majewski believes that we have lost the quality of spirituality that previous ages had, and he does not mince his words in laying into what he calls “the bottomless idiocy” of today’s celebrity culture.

“I'm standing in opposition to this tendency,” he affirmed.

The director, himself a painter, says he feels absolutely at home amidst the forgotten symbols that were so commonly used by artists of previous epochs.

“I work at my own rhythm,” he said, “because it's the only one I know.”

Majewski notes that he was lucky to get a clutch of Hollywood stars to work on conditions that were certainly not big budget.

Fortunately, English actress Charlotte Rampling had been entranced by one of Majewski’s earlier works, and she personally sought out the director, declaring she was happy to forfeit standard wages.

Dream

Film-makers are swift to point out that creating a dream sequence in film is incredibly difficult to pull off. When asked by thenews.pl whether he had any inspirations amongst the canon of international directors, he cited Polish master Wojciech Has, a favourite of Martin Scorsese and Luis Bunuel.

“Has is the most important figure in cinema for me,” Majewski affirmed, adding that until this day, the Polish director remains “a little under-appreciated.”

He added that he had had the immense good fortune to study under Has at the Lodz Film School, alma mater of Polanski, Wajda, Zanussi and other Polish greats.

Majewski confirmed that aside from Spanish sensation Pedro Almodovar, he had little time for contemporary directors, preferring old school legends like Fellini, Visconti, Tarkovsky and Bunuel, who he believes had one key quality lacking today, namely “depth.”

When asked about his next project, Majewski said that he will be taking a further step into the spiritual realm, making a film based on one of his own poems, about a man who lives through his dreams. (jb/pg)

See trailer for Mill and the Cross (2011)