Unlikely

The Way to Calvary by Peter Breugel the Elder

Insight came to me yesterday in an unlikely situation. I was viewing the 2011 Polish-Swedish film, The Mill and The Cross. The film is available for on-line streaming at Netflix. It is an expressionist piece about "The Way to Calvary", a painting by Peter Breugel the Elder (1525-1569). The unlikeliness of my enthusiasm for this film is probably evident already to those who are familiar with my blog. 

The film allowed me to see myself in the shoes of Breugel, as portrayed in the film by Rutger Hauer. The character is trying to convey his understanding of mortal existence through his painting. He explains the painting's composition to affluent patron in Spanish-colonized Flanders. The character and the film are able to show the horrors of religion and political oppression with a lack of sentimentality which is stunning. 

I was able to see the subversiveness of Breugel's work more clearly. He lived in a time when a common man could be picked off the road by authorities and strapped to a wheel after being beaten nearly to death without a trial. There are parts of the modern world where this still occurs daily.

The irony of the 2011 film is its adoption by the religious as a "Christian film". The film, as I experienced it, is overtly anti-religious. It is a depiction of the horrors of blind belief in gods or men in authority by divine right. As a writer of thought which often disputes the commonly accepted or believed, I felt a kinship with the Peter Breugel of the film. I have been in awe of the real Breugel's art since I was a young student of art history. His merging of art, social insight and protest against brutality represents a milestone on the road out of the Dark Ages toward the Enlightenment.