Directed by:
Ingmar BergmanCinematography:
Gunnar FischerComposer:
Erik NordgrenCast:
Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Inga Gill, Maud Hansson, Inga Landgré, Gunnel Lindblom, Bertil Anderberg (more)VOD (4)
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Returning exhausted from the Crusades to find medieval Sweden gripped by the Plague, a knight (Max von Sydow) suddenly comes face-to-face with the hooded figure of Death, and challenges him to a game of chess. As the fateful game progresses, and the knight and his squire encounter a gallery of outcasts from a society in despair, Bergman mounts a profound inquiry into the nature of faith and the torment of mortality. One of the most influential films of its time, The Seventh Seal is a stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning and a work of stark visual poetry. (Criterion)
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Reviews (7)
But He remains silent... The Seventh Seal is a film that will leave you with a lot of questions about the meaning of existence. You can ask yourself the same questions as the wandering crusader knight Antonius Block, but "I call out to Him in the darkness. But it’s as if no one was there". Don't expect anything more or less from it. However, it raises these questions in tremendously powerful scenes, so that even after multiple viewings, you will still be on the edge of your seat while watching Block's futile battle for life. A completely exceptional film that is rightly a classic and, together with Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, the best "question asking" work.
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The Seventh Seal is on the one hand a dark film full of depression and death, while on the other it radiates hope, life and even humour at times. The Crusader's symbolic last stand with Death, or the final view of the horizon with the dead, make this Swedish classic something unforgettable. In short, it is not a supreme or perfect work, but as a pointer back to the past, to the time of the Crusaders, the burning of witches and Death appearing to the people, this film by Ingmar Bergman is an illustrative example of the issue of man's encounter with death.
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I'll be honest with you: I have never really understood Ingmar Bergman, though with a few exceptions, and his critically acclaimed dramas usually simply bore me. The Seventh Seal is one of the few titles I come back to - perhaps because as an atheist, the spiritual aspect of the film passes me by, and unlike the interpreters of Bergman's work, I couldn't care less about the existential discussions of the 1950s conducted in the shadow of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear apocalypse. For me, the film remains a simple game about the fact that you can't outsmart death, or rather, that we all have to face it. Bergman had a lucky hand in choosing the actors, and perhaps even more than Max von Sydow in the main role, I find Gunnar Björnstrand's performance as the knight's squire, Jöns, likable. Perhaps the only thing I would criticize about the film is its overly stylized theatrical expression influenced by the fact that it was practically entirely created in the studio. Overall impression: 75%.
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Maybe when I watch it in 10 years, it'll say more to me, but for now, I haven't been able to fully appreciate what Ingmar Bergman presents in this piece. There are intriguing characters and fates outlined here, it all has a tone that gets under your skin, and maybe you'll start pondering, but as I say, I probably still need to mature.
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A person protecting their life in a chess battle against Death, both players speaking to each other through the bars, intertwined with (dis)belief in God, variously depicted attempts to escape the ubiquitous weight of life, and various human weaknesses dominated by anger or desire. Ingrid Bergman's recreation of sad hope.
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