65 Years Later: The Seventh Seal

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe
Running time: 96 minutes

Antonious Block – played by the sprawling, lanky figure of the late Max Von Sydow – lays on the solemn coastline like some transient husk washed up by a tide that has carried him from the unspeakable corners of God’s creation. What Block has witnessed as a returning knight of the Crusades is as unfathomable as the gurgling mass of water which serves as the backdrop for the opening scene. As he casts his thousand-yard stare towards the heavens, it becomes clear that although his physical involvement has ceased, the Holy War is still raging within the confines of his mind.

Precariously balanced on a pair of stones beside Block is a chessboard; its meaning eludes us until an imposing, black-robed, pale-faced figure materialises on the beach. “Who are you?” Block demands, “I am Death,” the figure retorts. Our knight's body may be ready to succumb to Death's dark embrace, but he must find some semblance of God’s existence for his mind to do the same. To bide some time, Block invites Death to take a seat and play some chess – the board becoming a spiritual battleground, the Knight and the Grim Reaper (eerily personified by Bengt Ekerort) in a tactical skirmish of wits. And so begins director Ingmar Bergman’s most iconic meditation on life’s great mysteries: The Seventh Seal.

As Block and his wisecracking, nihilistic squire Jöns travel inland, it becomes obvious that God is the needle and 14th Century Sweden is the haystack. Far removed from the Sweden they left behind ten years ago, the population has been ravaged by the bubonic plague and a thick, prevailing sense of dread permeates the film's atmosphere. “They talk of omens and other horrors,” Jöns utters. “Two horses ate one another last night...there were four suns in the heavens yesterday afternoon”. In a world where logic defining events seem to pose so many questions, how does Block intend to find his truth? Death seems to be the only certainty. The constant exposure to the ugliness of humanity – rife with murder, rape, grave-robbing and witch-hunts – at the height of a global pandemic makes one curse the timeliness of Bergman’s medieval vision.

If anything is to make God reveal himself, it’s a pair of travelling performers Block encounters on the road. Jof, an idealistic actor, and his wife Mia, dote on one another, almost as much as their baby son, Mikael. Both the purity of their unconditional love, and their kindness through adversity, offer him much needed respite from the bleakness of the landscape. Block offers the pair a room at his estate deeper into the mainland to weather the impending wave of the Black Death, which is ripping through the coastline. The narrative begins to take the shape of an existential road trip. Along with a few other stragglers, each character – grappling with their own spiritual conflicts – forms a caravan of human complexity, trying to evade the only certainty hot on their heels: that man in the dark robe. 

At points Bergman gets meta, especially when Block and Jöns stumble upon a church where an artist, Pictor, is working on a fresco of the Dance of Death. “Why paint such daubings?” asks Jöns.’’To remind people they will die…Why always make them happy?” the Pictor crudely replies. With this interaction, Bergman punctuates the struggles and questions surrounding artistic integrity. He arguably justifies his intentions when the artist gives his work some context, describing the victims of the plague in horrifying detail as a companion piece for his paintings. Even Jöns, a veteran of the crusades, is mortified by Pictor’s tales. “Are you scared?” he asks with perverse glee, taking pleasure in the fact that he’s combined an image with context to elicit a visceral response. Pictor is one of many characters which feel like a mouthpiece for Bergman’s personal musings.

After all this time, The Seventh Seal still proves to be one of Bergman’s more accessible works, with a direct approach to its macabre subject matter. Nonetheless, Gunnar Fischer’s cinematography is crisp, cutting its way deep into your soul, and Bergman’s composition remains beautifully ambiguous as they observe figures in a state of anguish, muted prayer and revelation.

Did you know? The film has been the subject of numerous parodies such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.