by Ingmar Bergman, 1957.
Starring: Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjoernstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Gunnel Lindblom, Nils Poppe, and Max von Sydow.
Rating: 8/10, 10/10.
The first time I tried to watch The Seventh Seal, I had to stop because I kept laughing at the idea of Death speaking Swedish. Silly of me, I know, but I just couldn’t get over it. When I think Swedish, I think the Swedish Chef (Shmerdie shmerdie). The second time, I was more ready for it, so I managed to get through the whole thing. And what a good thing that was.
I don’t know what I can say about it. What I’d always heard was that it was one of the greatest films of all time (true) and that it was horribly depressing (true, in a way). What I hadn’t heard was how funny it was, in a dark, bleak, "God is nothing" sort of way. But it is funny, at times, which is, to me, one of the things that makes it watchable. If a movie this deadly serious, this intensely meaningful, were completely serious and depressing, it would, in my view, sort of get in the way. And even the funniness (if that’s a word) comes from the idea that life itself is so horrible that all you can really do is laugh at it.
It’s the story of Antonius Block (von Sydow), a crusader who has just returned from the wars to his native Sweden, only to find it a land ravaged by the plague. As he lies dying on the shore, he finds himself confronted by Death (Ekerot). Block challenges Death to a game of chess as a way of buying himself time to try to do something meaningful with his life. From this comes a story which presents us with the unsettling notion that nothing is truly meaningful because of the impermanence of life and the quite likely non-existence of any God. Any more description of the plot or examination of the meaning is, quite frankly, beyond me. Let’s just say that this is truly one of the greatest films I have ever seen or ever hope to see.
The only complaint I have is about the subtitles. Whoever is responsible for them should be shot, or hanged, or, considering the events of the movie we’re discussing, burned at the stake. They are in white, which would be OK, but much of the time the background they are against is white as well, which makes it quite a challenge to read them. But the major problem is that, much of the time, they aren’t there. There will be entire lines of dialogue that simply aren’t translated. It really pissed me off. But that’s all right, most of the film comes through anyway.
read roger ebert's essay on the seventh seal