Interview Lech Majewski (“The Mill and the Cross”)

Amsterdam, Conservatorium Hotel, Thursday 23 February 2012

To promote his latest film, ‘The Mill and the Cross’, Polish multimedia artist and poet Lech Majewski visits Amsterdam. In a hotel room in the luxurious Conservatorium Hotel, we spoke at length with a passionate and enthusiastic Majewski about this film and his love for real art.

Hide and seek

In ‘The Mill and the Cross’ Lech Majewski allows the audience to watch the medieval painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The painting ‘The Carrying of the Cross’, which hangs in a museum in Vienna, contains many stories. The central point of the canvas is Jesus Christ, who collapses under the weight of his cross. Still, that might be one of the last things the art lover will see. Majewski is sometimes said to have a Bruegelian way of thinking. The filmmaker agrees. “In my story I always cover the most important thing with something that happens in the foreground. It’s kind of a hide-and-seek game. However, Bruegel was incredibly good at hiding his heroes. And if you think about it more deeply, it’s a great philosophy lesson: life goes on, people don’t pay attention to what’s happening near them. Something vital can happen close to a person and you can’t see it.” As an example, Majewski takes another painting by Bruegel, ‘The Fall of Icarus’, in which a farmer, a fisherman and a shepherd do not look back at Icarus who has just fallen into the sea. “Bruegel is the most intelligent and profound painter I have ever encountered.”

Art is not art

The indifference of humanity is something that touches Majewski. “At the moment there is nothing human in art anymore. We live in an “inhumane” society, we are like robots. Everyone looks at the same, dresses the same, eats the same. It’s like Metropolis, only they were better dressed in it,” Majewski laughs. According to the filmmaker, there are not many real artists left at the moment. “Nowadays, anyone can call themselves that. For example, I can take this shirt off, tear it and throw it on the floor and say it’s art. That a spectator does not understand, okay. The real artists come from the past.”

emotion

Yet Majewski can also call himself an artist. ‘The Mill and the Cross’ truly moves many people. “At first I thought the film would be purely for art lovers. But we were able to show the film to a large number of people who don’t fit that target group at all, and they turned out to be the nicest audience.” Majewski has already achieved many successes with ‘The Mill and the Cross’ in France, Japan, and of course in his home country Poland, but the audience in the United States is also raving about it. “One way or another, the film will find its way to the public. It moves them deeply. In addition, they are completely surprised by the aesthetics. They’ve never seen anything like this in the cinema, such a visual feast. That makes people curious,” Majewski tries to explain the success of his film. What further surprises the director is that especially women appreciate the film’s value. “I don’t know why, it surprised me. Maybe because they sympathize with the people being tortured in the film?”

baseball bat

As in his previous film, ‘Glass Lips’ (aka ‘Blood of a Poet’, 2007), dialogues don’t really matter in ‘The Mill and the Cross’ (in ‘Glass Lips’ these were completely absent). “When that film was shown, I was asked afterwards by someone from the audience why there was no dialogue in it. Then another visitor snapped at him: “Are you deaf? There are indeed dialogues in it!” And that’s the funny thing: the audience is always divided into those who hear words and those who don’t. That’s what I find most interesting about making films: I want the audience to start their own story. I don’t plan on hitting my message at them with a baseball bat. After all, as the Chinese say: a picture is worth a thousand words. Unfortunately, we are no longer allowed to do that. People talk to you and about you everywhere and if there are no dialogues, loads of music will be poured over us. We exaggerate. Actually like Rubens did.”

pinnacle of beauty

In ‘The Mill and the Cross’ Majewski focuses on about twelve people from the more than five hundred that Bruegel painted. “Together with Michael Gibson, the writer of the essay, who co-wrote the screenplay for the film, I’ve created a kind of cross-section of society. You see rich people, poor people, young people and old people. There is no deeper thought behind it.” What has been thought about deeply are the customs of the people in the sixteenth century. Like scrubbing the doorsteps, something that occurs several times in ‘The Mill and the Cross’. Majewski: “Studies into those times show that women scrubbed their doorsteps no less than three times a day. It was the only thing that looked really spic and span. It had some sort of symbolic meaning: it was the boundary of your own safe zone and so they treated that with extra care. For example, it was also rubbed with special, deliciously scented spreads.” What is also striking is how women press the bread against their stomach before eating it. “There’s a reason for that too,” says Majewski. “Women generally wanted to get pregnant. The pinnacle of beauty was a pregnant woman. This is because child mortality rates were huge, so women often had to be pregnant to have children. Women tucked loaves of bread under their clothes to appear pregnant. Second, the bread is symbolically the body of Jesus Christ. And third, the bread kept you warm.” Majewski indicates that he likes to dig so deeply into the daily routine of people from that time. “You come across so many idiosyncrasies, things that are completely forgotten, crazy manners. It’s wonderful to be able to put that in your film.”

no propaganda

Majewski doesn’t like to manipulate people. “I grew up in communist Poland, where we suffered from propaganda. I don’t want to manipulate people in such a traditional way. Ultimately, of course, you do, because you create something with which you want to elicit a reaction. But I try to minimize it as much as possible. I expect the viewer to watch my film on their own terms, and we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.” The filmmaker explains that the reactions of the public run like a thread through his life. “It’s the same as with my video art pieces. They visit it, don’t understand it and walk away frustrated. But the next day they come back. It keeps gnawing at them, they don’t get rid of it. Apparently I make images that stick with people.”

heroes

“Making movies is my alibi to spend time with my greatest heroes,” Majewski continues. “I want to learn from them, I want to befriend them. Making ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ (2004) enabled me to become friends with Hieronymusch Bosch. And now Pieter Bruegel. I spent four years with him. And Jean Michel Basquiat, it’s my brainchild. I may have had the film directed by Julian Schnabel (‘Basquiat’, 1996), but it’s my baby. I prefer their company to that of gangsters, cops, or some idiot. They will make interesting characters in their own right to look at, but not to spend time with.” Majewski is currently working on a film about a poet obsessed with Dante. “So now I spend a lot of time with Dante. It’s insurmountable. I like to be with my ‘friends’.”