The Seventh Seal

I recently had the opportunity to see the 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal in theaters.  I jumped at the chance to see the film as I had heard great things about it, especially from my trusted friend El Lobo who has mentioned the movie a few times in his blog.  The Seventh Seal was written and directed by the acclaimed filmmaker Ingmar Bergman.  Truthfully, my knowledge of Bergman's career and life history is rather lacking.  The only previous movie I'd watched from the man was The Virgin Spring, and I gave that one a go simply because of its well-documented influence on the 1970's horror film The Last House on the Left.  But this was part of the reason I wanted to see The Seventh Seal, to broaden my knowledge and to experience a classic for the first time in a theatrical setting (rather than watching it alone on my grungy laptop screen, for example).

The Seventh Seal is in the medieval Europe during the plague, where the ever-present threat of sickness and death loom large.  The film begins with Death approaching a knight (played by Max von Sydow) on a shoreline.  Death has come to take the knight's life, but in a clever effort to delay his inevitable death, challenges Death to a game of chess.  Death agrees, choosing to play the black pieces ("It becomes me well", he says).  I loved the imagery of the hooded and robed figure of Death standing against the shore.  At the risk of sounding like a 15 year-old goth, I have always found personifications of death to be both incredibly interesting and appealing.  The representation of Death on display in The Seventh Seal appealed to me through its clean, iconic look as well as its playful characterization (the idea that Death would acquiesce to a game of chess with a mortal is innately intriguing).

The character of the knight, dubbed Antonius Block, is also an intriguing personality.  Disillusioned by the events around him, Block desperately wants to believe in a god, but is continuously frustrated by the lack of evidence supporting the existence of a higher power.  The knight's crisis of faith is well illustrated in the confessional scene in which Block laments, "What will become of us who want to believe, but cannot?  And what of those who neither will nor can believe?", to the figure of Death who Block mistakes for a priest.  The knight's struggles for certainty in his beliefs raise interesting questions about the nature of faith.

And it's easy for the audience to sympathize with Block's crisis of faith as the harsh realities of life during the Black Death leave many people vulnerable to manipulation.  This is hauntingly illustrated in the film during a scene in which a young girl, accused of causing the plague through her relationship with the devil, is burned at the stake.  Unable to face the up to their bleak reality, it is all too easy to displace one's problems onto a scapegoat.  But this is one of the things that makes the film's medieval setting so fascinating.  It is interesting to watch what happens to people's beliefs and convictions when disease and death become a major part of the reality of everyday life.

Thanks again to El Lobo for recommending The Seventh Seal.  I thoroughly enjoyed the film, and found that the images and themes presented in the story gave me plenty to mull over and think about for hours afterward.  I look forward to reading more about the film, and discovering more about the environment in which it was written, filmed, and released.