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Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bibi Andersson
Sweden, 1957
Not Rated (mature themes)
Recognized in my "The Century's Masterpieces" page.
IS THERE A GOD?
The Seventh Seal doesn’t sit well with many of today’s moviegoers
because it’s so blunt. It doesn’t hide its theme or play games with it-
its theme is made completely clear. The imagery, once ballyhooed,
is still masterful, but also looks fake. This is a movie
like so many other Ingmar Bergman movies- one that fuses reality with
surrealism. Yet, even with its outdated look, strange theatricality, and
alien obviousness, it will always be relevant and potent because
people will always, as far as I know and think, be searching for life’s
meaning and the answer to God’s silence.
The film is set in the Middle Ages, at a time when Sweden is being plagued by the Black Death and suffering is everywhere. A knight (Max von Sydow in his first of many Bergman films) and his squire (Gunnar Bjornstrand) have returned from the crusades to find all this dying and, in one of the most famous and parodied images in foreign film, the caped figure Death comes for the knight. The knight is not afraid of dying, but is afraid of what comes after- afraid of the life beyond. He bargains with Death, asking him for a game of chess- if Death wins, the knight will gladly meet his doom, if Death loses, the knight will live. In one of the best scenes in the film, the knight and his squire visit a church. The knight decides to confess to what he thinks is a priest behind the bars. We learn that he is not looking for anything but knowledge- that God either exists or doesn’t. He wants a guarantee. He pours his heart and soul out, only to find that the priest was actually Death, ruthlessly tricking him. I can relate to the scene and so can everyone else who has questioned the existence of God. Nearly everyone has. God is a mysterious figure, and his elusiveness is despairing to the knight. The knight is not disheartened by the appearance of Death; he may not be able to find the truth of what lies behind dying, but he is now on a quest to fulfill the time he still has of living.
All around him there is misery. People are in tears, and in another great and famous scene, flagellants carry heavy crosses and beat themselves and each other; they are convinced the plague is a punishment from God and want to please Him by further torturing themselves. The knight’s squire is cynical and funny all the while for he is a down-to-earth man and does not seem to share the knight’s feelings of nothingness, of void. We are introduced to a few more characters. The knight soon meets a traveling act comprised of a couple, Joseph and Mary, their baby son, and a mischievous fellow, Skat. The squire discovers a holyman stealing a dead woman’s jewelry, the same holyman who urged his master and him to join the Crusades ten years ago. The holyman, Raval, explains, "It’s now every man for himself!" We also meet a quiet girl who becomes the squire’s servant.
In Joseph and Mary, the knight finds his hope- his only remaining reason for living is to save this family from the grasps of Death, with whom he continues the chess game throughout the film half-heartedly. In Raval, Ingmar Bergman shows us a man who preaches holiness and religion, but who is flawed by his hypocrisy- he has major doubts of God’s existence, just like the knight does. Joseph and Mary are a beautiful young couple who make money from making fools of themselves, by acting. They have a son, and the knight finds meaning in life by doing his final good deed, saving them. In the film’s famous final scene, Death leads the knight, his squire, Raval, Skat, and others in an eerie dance to their fate as Joseph and Mary watch from their wagon.
While the score is too insistent and the dialogue is too melodramatic and flowery to fair well in a modern film, The Seventh Seal is a greatly powerful movie because it knows the human longing to see, feel, and know God. We, being humans, find it hard to believe in God because He isn’t something we can feel, touch, hear, or see, and what we do believe is usually something one of our five senses knows is present. We believe that water quenches our thirst because we are no longer thirsty after we drink it, we believe food nourishes us because we are no longer hungry after we eat, we believe love conquers all because we have felt love and have felt its power- but we don’t know if God has made the trees, rivers, seas- He gives no sign that He is in heaven or on earth. It isn’t like believing that water is in the ocean because there is water in the ocean, but when we look to the sky, we don’t see anyone. There is an especially moving line during the confession scene where the knight asks, "What happens to those who want to believe, but can’t?"
The Seventh Seal doesn't dictate to us that God does not exist. It never discusses that. It is about our weariness of God’s distance, not about God’s existence. Many people are not sure God exists, but everyone feels a certain isolation from our Creator. By being about a universal feeling, our seperation from God, The Seventh Seal is powerful and the characters' confusion about religion resemble the restlessness and urgency of adolescense. The Seventh Seal is a work of brilliance.
By Andrew Chan
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