The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection | Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot

The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection | Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot | A Great Film

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The Seventh Seal -...

	The Seventh Seal - Criterion Collection Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot Criterion, 1999 average customer review:based on 181 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Thought-provoking and beautifully shot film

This movie starts with a war-weary knight who is returning home to Sweden from the Crusades in the 14th Centaury. He arrives back to his homeland to find it in the middle of the throes of the Black Plague. The pious knight played by Max von Sydow arrives home after years of fighting to find death.

The knight has many questions about God, death and the after life. And convinces Death to play him in a game of chess to determine if he would live or not. Of course we can tell his demeanor as the movie progresses that the knight is only trying to buy time in order to answers his questions.

Of course the knight finds no answers in his bleak search for the meaning of life. Of course his chess game with Death postponed his death, but he did not find any answers and only brought death down on his friends and family. Though through an extra delaying tactic the knight tricks Death into letting an innocent couple escape his fate.

This movie would only work in black and white. Bergman expertly uses the effect of the juxtaposition of light and dark to affect our perception. The mood he creates and shares with us is just brilliant. It shows us that there is a fine line between life and death.

I would love to see the DVD and see what the extra material is. I am sure it is worth the difference. This would also make a fantastic stage production.

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A Great Film

Ingmar Bergman's legendary film "The Seventh Seal" winds up on almost every critic's "Favorite Movies" list, is one of the first twenty movies to be put in The Criterion Collection (#11), and is, actually, a really good movie.
I know that a lot of critics judge a film by how well they are made, which definitely attributes to how good this movie is. But this movie is also entertaining and has some fascinating things going on on-screen...That and the premise is so damned cool. Antonius Block (Max von Sydow, 'Needful Things') is a Knight returning home to Sweden from the Crusades while the Black Plague rages on. When he reaches it he is confronted by Death (Bengt Ekerot), who says to him "I have been at your side for a long time". Not wanting to die, Antonius challenges Death to a game of chess. This game is spread out through the film; Amid this storyline, other things happen...They meet a young actor, his wife, and young son. The young actor has a few speeches in a few scenes; There's also a deeply haunting scene where Antonius finds a young woman being beaten. When he asks why, the soldiers claim that she slept with the devil and has brought the plague down on them.
The movie's plot, in a few words, would be "Knight plays chess with Death."
That is, basically, what the film is about. But this film is also about the underlying fear of the characters that God doesn't exist, something Antonius especially worries about. At one point, he goes into a confessional and confesses this to a hooded figure and also confesses his strategy for winning the chess game against Death...Problem is, the hooded figure reveals himself to be death. In my synopsis, I've left out a few important characters such as Jons, The Squire...This character is important to the story and recites some of the best dialogue later in the movie. At one point, when the young woman mentioned above is about to be burned at the stake; Antonius asks her if she has seen the devil. She rants about how the devil is everywhere, standing right behind Antonius and etcetera. As she's placed on the stake, Jons says to Antonius "Look into her eyes. She sees nothing but emptiness." Excluding all people who don't like watching foreign films, old films, or the commercial movie watcher...The Seventh Seal is a movie that film buffs should definitely enjoy. It's a great film, in every way, that is deservedly placed on all these lists that it finds itself on. The image of death, esepcially played by the actor it's played by, has never truly been better and the final shot of Death leading a parade of people to their final place is a haunting one.

GRADE: A

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try this without sound or sub-titles

Yes, I have seen Seventh Seal many times, and it is, indeed, stark.

The other night I watched the new Criterion DVD I was gifted with the lights out, the sound off and volumes one and two of Coil's 'Music to listen to in the dark' popped in the stereo. I mean, once one has once seen Seventh Seal, there is nothing to the plot. (I won't say that of the dialog because I don't speak Swedish.) It's like Oedipus Rex.

This is a Swedish movie. Everyone in it looks Swedish. (Even death). Death is beyond anything from Bill and Ted, yet (without Seventh Seal) would we even have Bill and Ted?

I just like to watch these Swedish people talk. Perhaps the longest scene in the movie is shot on a beach, the horizon at mid-screen, and the entire top of the screen contains a horse, stamping, moving about, never still for but a moment. It is imagery that takes your breath away. As an image it is more than I could ever hope for, incomprehensible and compelling. Add Max Van Sydow, and, well, whatever! It's not a movie that you should intend to understand. It's just beauty to watch and think about later. Maybe always.

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Even death hasn't any answers

Even death hasn't any answers in this existential exploration of life. Who knows what we might do that is really significant in life? Would depicting death in a painting send the people to the priests? (Would a picture of death be more interesting than a naked woman?) Would having visions save us? The iconic characterization of death -- even to the knocking on the door and slowly climbing away into the heavens -- is all here. One critique is the subtitles merge into some of the lighter scenes making it difficult to parce some significant dialogue.

Overhyped, but good.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

So I've finally seen The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman's most famous film and, perhaps, one of the most famous films ever created. And I have to say, while I found it interesting, well-written, and occasionally amusing, I ended up thinking that my view of the film was somewhat tainted by the constant praise to which the film is subjected; in other words, that it didn't live up to a level of hype that, perhaps, no movie (with the possible exception, of course, of the immortal Night of the Lepus) could ever hope to.

The much-abbreviated version of the plot known to most-- that Antonius Block, a knight (Max von Sydow), returned from the Crusades, challenges Death (Bengt Ekerot, fresh from playing Hamlet) to a game of chess-- is hopelessly simplified. There is a great deal more to this film, and anyone expecting ninety-six minutes of chess playing is probably going to be quite confused. Block and his squire Jons (Bergman regular Gunnar Bjornstrand) have recently gotten back from a decade away, and Block is eager to return home to his wife Karin (Inga Landre, still alive and working as she nears the age of eighty). Death appears to Block, and the game of chess is proposed as a way for Block to buy time to get back home. The chess match acts almost as a framing piece; the journey's the thing here. Block and Jons, as fine a team as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, have learned to suffer one another over the past decade, like an old married couple; Jons, however, an avowed and vocal atheist, has noticed his lord's crisis of faith, and spends much of the film subtly manipulating Block to his way of thinking. Block, meanwhile, is seeing more than enough in a Swedish countryside ravished by the Black Plague to make him think that God may, in fact, be dead. The clergy to be found in the film are all bombastic buffoons, and a good number of them are outright evil; Block and Jons, in their own ways, are determined to do right by the few souls they encounter (in contrast to the clergy's scope, which is the entire country, or so it would seem). The two of them gather a small band together, all headed for Block's castle; the chess game unfolds piecemeal as the journey continues.

There is, certainly, much to be praised about this movie. The acting is good all around; von Sydow overplays a bit, but one gets the idea that that was stage direction straight from Bergman. The camerawork is well-done. The sound is a bit rough, but I'm more than willing to blame that on the transfer, or my particular copy of the disc. Where the film usually treads the line of greatness is in Bergman's understated script; Block's understatement and Death's civility are excellently counterpointed by Jons' brashness.

An enjoyable film, and an exceptionally good one. While it may be all that, you might still have to buy the bag of chips yourself. ****

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