The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal

“A Knight and his squire are home from the crusades. Black Death is sweeping their country. As they approach home, Death appears to the knight and tells him it is his time. The knight challenges Death to a chess game for his life. The Knight and Death play as the cultural turmoil envelopes the people around them as they try, in different ways, to deal with the upheaval the plague has caused.”

4.5 stars

If you consider yourself a movie buff, this is a movie you have probably seen. If not, you need to put it on the top of your list because you don’t know shit about the history of cinema until you have experienced this film. The fact that this move was made in 1957, literally dumbfounds me. Everything about it from the cinematography to plot elements are light years ahead of its time. It is the calling card and first major success of the legendary director Ingmar Bergman. If you don’t know who that is, then I suggest you go sit quietly at your desk and put your head down until the bell rings.

This movie literally wrote the book on the use of lighting and shadows for all subsequent films. I’m serious; you would be hard pressed to find any film school worth its salt that doesn’t show this as an introductory requirement. The film comes off (like its director) as very pretentious, but in a good way. The story is very straightforward, but it tries (successfully) to be so much more. A disillusioned Knight returns from the crusade angry and confused. These feelings are further manifested by the fact that he is returning to homeland ravaged by the plague where people are dying by the thousands. He then engages in a lengthy game of chess with Death (both figuratively and literally). And that’s really the entire story; there is not much more meat to the plot than that. But it’s Bergman’s exploration through the human condition and dissection of the human psyche that leave you thinking about the movie days after you’ve left the theater.

And the themes really are timeless. How many different generations can identify with the questions about the futility of war and the morality questions that go hand in hand with it? Or the inevitability of death and, to an extent, life’s own inherent futility? Even the most opinionated amongst us would find themselves at least thinking twice about their own beliefs on life and death. Most of the time you go to the movies just to be entertained, but every once and a while you see a film that really makes you think. THIS is one of those movies.

SPOILERS: The Knight makes his journey home and, along the way, meets a wide array of characters that facilitate him reexamining his own purpose in life. He really does come full circle from a person who believes in nothing to a person that believes in the most powerful of human ideas . . . hope. Unfortunately not even his transformation can save him from an inevitable end. So, he shares a ‘Last Supper’ with his new found brethren and accepts his fate. The last scene is beautifully eerie and ends with the only words spoken the entire movie by a mute girl. She looks into the eyes of death and chillingly whispers, “It is finished.”

It really is a tale that, again, we can all identify with. I say this because, as much as we try to avoid losing our own game of chess with Death, in the end it seems Death wins . . . as it always does.