This film was the first Bergman film that I watched in my life (in retrospect, on the channel “Culture” – followed by “Persona” and “Autumn Sonata). At first I was not very inspired, impressed by the genius of the “Person” but over time, it is “the Seventh seal” was for me the most expensive, the most personal film by Bergman. This brilliant author was absolutely right, once noting that “the Seventh seal” is the only film that is close to everyone because we are all going to meet death. Bergman, in a terse, honed to perfection the film sets the global questions and not answers, offering the viewer to think for himself. Is there meaning to life which cannot be destroyed by death? For what man lives in this world? And how to accept the fact that there is death? “If God existed, how would I made that I am not a God?” wrote Nietzsche.
Picture of Ingmar Bergman’s “the Seventh seal” is only formally takes place in the decorations of the middle ages. Substitute any other time – nothing will change. But for a long time impressionable audience, can empathize with not only the bandits of the “Boomer” or “Teams” (here he’s a hero of our time!), remember the deep despair of the knight, Anthony Block, a noble warrior, who had gone from family to fight for the faith. For ten years he was looking death in the eye, how many times in my mind died in every battle and for what? Is worthy of his death the Holy city of Jerusalem, where you have to defend from the Muslims the Holy sepulchre? And is there any God?
Antonius Block internally died (later the motif of living death will appear in another major film of Bergman’s “wild strawberries”), but a weak spring of life has not left him yet. And he wants to know not about himself – about himself he decided long ago, and of all mankind – why everyone lives in the world where there is hunger, pestilence and gnashing of teeth. Brilliant insight Bergman brings his hero to the death (fu fu, shame brad pitt – Bengt Ekerot true death!). He is ready to die and wants it, but before he dies, he wants to understand why the person lives. Delay, this death one day. The day seems like an eternity. And playing chess, three con. Lose the Block would take his death, will win – no. Chess is a mirror-image of the whole structure of the film. As on the chessboard has black and white squares, and in “the Seventh seal”, Bergman confronts the opposite things. Faith and unbelief, the death wish and lust for life, cruelty and love. At first they play on the background of water and fields, as if that is a bet on the line, but in the third round at stake is the family of itinerant actors, with which the fate of the Block took his life.
Faith is such a meal. All the same, that to love someone who is hidden in darkness and is not of a person, no matter how cry. But now it suddenly became not important. It has lost all meaning… I’ll remember this moment, this peace, serenity, Cup of milk, a sleeping Michael, the EFA with the lute, your face in the evening twilight. I will carry the memories so carefully, as if in my hands a Cup filled to the brim with fresh milk. This will be my banner, and a source of joy.
Seeing their love and affection to each other (and call them Joseph and Mary – how the Holy family), Antonius Block realizes how much he lost, ten years protecting Jerusalem from the Saracens. True Holiness within man, not outside. Family is much more important than all the relics in the world. And love is what lights the way of man in the midst of the darkness of life. To the death.
Already in Bergman’s “the Seventh seal” proves the Evangelical idea that God is love. The search for God outside of yourself leads to emptiness and despair. And the love of phantoms created by the people, is only a pathetic shadow of the only sacred love – the love of man. It’s also no accident that the baby is Michael, who is so loved by the parents, is mapped to by Jesus himself, although only begins to live. Life is truly a sacred gift of nature and not to destroy death. Because life, like a Phoenix, always born again.
Antonius Block not found evidence for the existence of God, but he found much more. The meaning of life in self-sacrifice. Seeing that he was losing the death became interested in the companions of a knight, including a family of actors. He wins – they shall perish. “Nobody is going to die instead of me” – the categorical imperative philosophers-existentialists. The block succumbed to the death and lost, but “I never noticed”. Party with death suddenly became unimportant. He performed his duty as a warrior and man, giving his life so that others can live.
The final scene of the film takes place in the castle of the Block where he finally meets his wife who waited for him for ten years. Only he has changed, and no longer the one she loved. My house – my fortress. But only as long as there is love. But it’s worth it to go, and now death in the form of a clown knocking on the door below, performing a dance of death, to divert the procession to the land of shadows.
And it’s not really important whether God exists. The main thing is love.
Rating: 10,5
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