"Even before the opening credits run, “The Mill & the Cross” casts a transfixing spell, as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the great 16th-century Flemish artist, chats with his patron Nicholas Jonghelinck while he sketches studies for a large work he is preparing. Then the camera pulls back, blending scores of actors and animals with computer-generated effects, painted backdrops and location shots to restage Bruegel’s 1564 masterpiece, “The Way to Calvary.”

Directed by the Polish filmmaker and video artist Lech Majewski, “The Mill & the Cross” has ambitions as sweeping as the vast canvas that Bruegel fills. In this lush and hypnotic examination of a painter’s work and the times in which he lived, Mr. Majewski presents an extended contemplation of the creative process itself."