Not Rated | 1 h 36 min | Drama, Historical Fantasy | 1957
Can a film about death also be about life? If Swedish screenwriter-director Ingmar Bergman’s film “The Seventh Seal” is any indication, it can.
After a bruising campaign in the Crusades, medieval knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire, Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand), rest on a beach. Jons is the more cynical of the two, while Block, despite himself, is sincere in his search for meaning and is often found in prayer. Suddenly, the black-robed, black-hooded figure of Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears with his fateful summons.
Stalling, Block draws Death into a game of chess and strikes a bargain: If he loses, he’ll die without further protest, but as long as he’s playing, he must be allowed to live. Death agrees, seemingly impressed by Block’s urge to perform one last meaningful act. Block believes his life’s been meaningless because he’s been selfish. He’s also not sure if there’s fulfilment after he dies, to make selflessness worthwhile. The game pauses then resumes as Block journeys through the land; Death enters and leaves at various points.
As the “Black Death” or plague sweeps the land, the soldierly duo meet a bewildering cast of characters: a mural artist, a clergyman-turned-thief, and a woman accused of being a witch. Also, a family of traveling actors: childishly naïve juggler Jof (Nils Poppe), his street-artist wife Mia (Bibi Andersson), and baby son Mikael.
Block spends an evening of mirth and music with this trio. Sharing their meal of wild strawberries and milk, while little Mikael sleeps, Block becomes convinced: He must protect them from the plague. He insists that they accompany him to his castle, not continue on a route that risks death. Block suspects that his selfless act won’t defeat death, but he now wonders if it’ll make his life, and theirs, worthwhile.
Bergman’s pared down use of music heightens his visual artistry and his use of light, darkness, and shadow.
Bergman grew up in a conservative home with fine moral traditions. Biblical symbolism (the breaking of bread and wine at the Last Supper, Christ’s words before and during his crucifixion) populates this screenplay. The film’s title and the narrator’s haunting opening lines are from a commentary, known as the scroll of seven seals, on the verse of the book of Revelation 8:1. The seven seals from the commentary unravel seven prophecies corresponding to different times in the salvation story, as Christ breaks each seal. The seventh (and final) seal unravels the end times, when silence in heaven awaits Christ’s second coming. The opening shot of a hovering eagle represents the animal symbol of St. John, the evangelist believed to be the book’s author.
Bergman’s Spiritual Symbolism
In a lonesome chapel, Block believes he’s confessing to a priest, but the caped confessor turns out to be Death. Disenchanted with the silent, crucified Christ, Block demands to see, touch, and hear God so that he may believe; he’s had it with conjecture and hope.Bergman builds on this to disprove the cynical Jons. Love is not “the blackest of plagues.” It’s the opposite: a nectar, as life-giving as a bowl of milk. It only seems unspectacular, the way one day is “like another.” Actually, love is as singular as the season of spring, which, to Mia, is better than summer or winter. With childlike certainty in the joy of marriage she tells Block, “It’s always better being a couple.”
Bergman shows flagellants, medieval practitioners of self-mortification, intent on purging themselves of sin, or atoning. They see life, not just the plague, as God’s punishment.
Bergman’s cinematic portrait of Mia’s idyllic family is a riposte to this grim image. Her family represents being, more than becoming, as sufficiently worthy of love. She tells Jof, “Sit still and don’t say a word,” then adds unprovoked, “I love you!” She loves Jof and Mikael for themselves, not for what they say or do.
Bergman hints that God’s love, too, is gratuitous; humans can’t deserve, and don’t need to earn God’s love. Expressed cryptically in Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God,” this kind of love answers Block’s quest for a tangible God. When Death beckons, Block’s assertion that his flesh is afraid but he is not, affirms the dignity of humans, who are much more than their bodies: that which can only be seen, heard, touched.
To Bergman, recognition of death’s inevitability should make us want to love more, not merely live (or live it up) more.
Now, no longer indifferent, Block senses that God may not be “hidden in a fog of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles” after all. Instead, God may be in the fully-expressed promises of Block’s loving and lovable family and friends. And in miracles visible in broad daylight: familial love, music from a lyre, an evening breeze, the laughter of friends, and the serenity of a sleeping baby.
