Benefit
Bluelighter
The Seventh Seal is probably Ingmar Bergman's most well known and highly regarded film. Released in 1957, it won a special jury prize at Cannes and boosted the Swedish director to international prominence. The film heavily influenced the French New Wave, particularly François Truffaut, and later would have an impact on the Hollywood auteurs.
It is the tale of a knight returning from the Crusades to find his Swedish homeland wracked by the Plague. Death, in the form of a black hooded pale-faced man, haunts his every step. The visual image of the noble but disillusioned knight (played by Max van Sydow) playing chess with Death is one of the most famous images in film. The Knight questions his Christian principles and spends the last hour and thirty minutes of his celluloid existence trying to get a response from God or Satan, as either one can validate his religious beliefs. Instead, Death is the only one to answer his pleas; Death, as the immutable agent of Nature and nothing more. It's a pretty harsh journey through the depressing landscape of existentialism.
To look back on The Seventh Seal now with modern goggles, you might not think much of it. But you have to understand that in 1957, people weren't making movies like this. Certainly not in Hollywood. The existential themes Bergman chooses to explore are heavy and depressing. They are also, owing to his wonderful scriptwriting ability, handled with superb wit, humor and a dry cynicism that keeps everything in perspective. The movie is gorgeously filmed in black and white.
They say that film noir is the cinema of anxiety, but no director has ever captured the complexities of psychological anxiety quite like Ignmar Bergman. He can insert you into a character's internal space and make you feel trapped there. And because these issues of death, existence, life and religion are so personal to him, the film has a special rawness, the same kind of rawness that makes Graham Greene's Catholic novels so intense and powerful. In a way it's comforting that Bergman recently passed away; if he could pass on into the oblivion of death after grappling with it for so long during his life, it means I can too. And one day I will.
It is the tale of a knight returning from the Crusades to find his Swedish homeland wracked by the Plague. Death, in the form of a black hooded pale-faced man, haunts his every step. The visual image of the noble but disillusioned knight (played by Max van Sydow) playing chess with Death is one of the most famous images in film. The Knight questions his Christian principles and spends the last hour and thirty minutes of his celluloid existence trying to get a response from God or Satan, as either one can validate his religious beliefs. Instead, Death is the only one to answer his pleas; Death, as the immutable agent of Nature and nothing more. It's a pretty harsh journey through the depressing landscape of existentialism.
To look back on The Seventh Seal now with modern goggles, you might not think much of it. But you have to understand that in 1957, people weren't making movies like this. Certainly not in Hollywood. The existential themes Bergman chooses to explore are heavy and depressing. They are also, owing to his wonderful scriptwriting ability, handled with superb wit, humor and a dry cynicism that keeps everything in perspective. The movie is gorgeously filmed in black and white.
They say that film noir is the cinema of anxiety, but no director has ever captured the complexities of psychological anxiety quite like Ignmar Bergman. He can insert you into a character's internal space and make you feel trapped there. And because these issues of death, existence, life and religion are so personal to him, the film has a special rawness, the same kind of rawness that makes Graham Greene's Catholic novels so intense and powerful. In a way it's comforting that Bergman recently passed away; if he could pass on into the oblivion of death after grappling with it for so long during his life, it means I can too. And one day I will.