American Cinematographer - June 2011 - 17

Majewski imagined that the lynchpin of The Mill & The Cross would be a tableau vivant involving hundreds of extras. “My vision was to assemble this crowd of people who are motionless in the painting and then sail with the camera through the crowd, seeing their faces, hearing their thoughts,” he says. “Everybody is motionless, suspended in this magical time. The Greeks have a word for it: kairos, the holy time. In the most important moments, time seems to be suspended, whether it’s a moment of grief or ecstasy.” This initial idea is intact in the final film. The camera tracks alongside the tableau, finally arriving at Bruegel (Rutger Hauer), who is explaining the scene to his patron (Michael York). The camera then tilts up to reveal Bruegel’s mountain, the windmill and the miller himself, who pauses from grinding wheat to impassively watch the proceedings below. The camera tilts back down, and the action resumes. It’s a 4 1⁄2minute sequence presented as one continuous shot. “This is the centerpiece of the triptych,” Majewski says. Before and after this frozen moment, life goes on. The film follows half a dozen characters from the painting, fleshing out their stories, and includes snippets from the Passion of Christ. Bruegel, the ringmaster, explains all as he prepares sketches and stage-manages the extras, his own painted landscapes a ubiquitous backdrop. Situating living actors within a Bruegel painting took much trial-and-error. “The biggest challenge came from my misunderstanding of how we were going to treat this main image,” says Majewski. “I imagined I’d find a landscape similar to Bruegel’s, put 500 characters dressed in period costumes in that landscape, and then photograph it with a Steadicam or some form of traveling shot.” He managed to find a landscape in the Jura Mountains that resembled Bruegel’s eerie rock formations. But during tests, Majewski hit two snags. “First, the light changed so fast that I knew we could never capture the entire scene with so many characters in one go and later match those things. Second, if I used a wide lens, the rock that’s so impressive in Bruegel’s painting would be tiny, like a finger; and if I used

The film, which involved 48 days of filming and 28 months of post, culminates in the procession toward Calvary, where Jesus is largely obscured by the throngs (as in Bruegel’s masterpiece). Creating an organic-looking unity between multiple elements while emulating Bruegel’s colors and atmospherics was the greatest challenge during the color correction.

a longer lens, it would just become a blob in the background. The tests proved to me that my concept was completely, entirely wrong.” Majewski realized he would have to piece Bruegel’s world together from the ground up. His first stop was Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, which provided a 120-MB photo of the 49"x67" painting. “We could blow it up on a huge screen, zoom in and get fantastic details,” Majewski says. He and a team of visual-effects artists then set about removing all 500 figures from
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the digital reproduction. Museums in London and Darmstadt supplied other photos of Bruegel’s work, which allowed the filmmakers to build a sizable library of landscape elements that could extend or alternate with The Way to Calvary ’s background. Working so closely with the painting, Majewski realized that it contains not one cohesive perspective, but seven different ones. “Some are from high above, some from below, some from left or right — Bruegel tricks you!” he notes. “I presume
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American Cinematographer - June 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 2011