Review of the Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The story is set in Sweden during the times of the Black Death and it tells the story of a knight from the Crusades who plays a game of chess with the personification of Death who has come to take him.

The Crusades were a series of wars fought between 1095 and 1291 AD against primarily the Muslims in Levant, in which the western European nations engaged using the propaganda of religious expeditionary wars. The first Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II with the goal to restore Christian access, which had been cut off by the Muslims, to the holy places in and around Jerusalem. The Crusaders were comprised of military units of Roman Catholics from all over Western Europe. Thousands of soldiers became Crusaders by taking vows and were granted plenary indulgence by the Pope. However, after successes in the early waves, the later crusades failed and the crusaders were forced to return home.

In the film The Seventh Seal, The knight Antonius Block and his squire Jons have returned, after ten years at the Crusades disillusioned, to Sweden. As the film opens, we see an evocative shot of a big, black bird hovering in the empty sky symbolizing the upcoming apocalypse or end and the knight and his squire resting on a rocky beach. The knight now engages in a quest of his own that is, to find God and the meaning of life. On the shore then we see the ominous figure of Death stepping out, cutting the sound of birds and sea, with a resolve to claim the knight. The Crusader however delays and challenges Death to a game of Chess. He also puts a condition in front of Death that is, if he wins he'll escape Death and so long as the game goes on he is free to pursue his quest to find God and do one significant act during his lifetime. As Death and the knight play in intervals through the film, he and his squire go on a journey through Sweden. The squire, who is the knight's sole companion, is a rationalist, idealist and has a hedonist viewpoint of life. He knows death as an end of life and that has to be resisted.

As the knight and his squire are travelling through Sweden they come across people for whom God is someone who is the source of destruction and death. The knight then enters a peasant's church and confesses that he is not afraid of the prospect of death but the fact that he cannot kill God within him or find a proof of God's existence in the present life.

Bergman through the film tries to portray that religion which should be a source of spiritual peace and salvation changes character and becomes the cause of persecution, suppression and cruelty. He shows this through a horrifying scene in which we see a procession of flagellants, a line of half-naked men lashing one another; monks struggling under the weight of huge crosses or with aching arms holding skulls over their bowed heads; the faces of children who wear crowns of thorns; people walking barefoot or on their knees. The procession interrupts a performance of a group of players and a priest screams abuses at the audience and proclaims the wrath of God in the form of the plague.

The knight and his squire while searching for food and water enter a village where the squire saves a woman from being raped and killed by a man who had convinced the knight to go on the Crusades. The squire intends to make the woman his housekeeper presuming that his wife would have been dead and asks her to accompany him.

The knight, willing to go anywhere for his answers, asks a young girl, about to be burnt for being a witch, if she sees God. She in turn replies to him that you see God in the eyes of another human being but the knight replies that he can only see terror. While the girl is dying, the knight sees hope while the squire sees despair and blankness.

In the film there are a number of other characters who are woven into the central engagement of the film and who affect the knight's quest to find God. The most important among these characters are the group of strolling players which comprise of a juggler Jof, his wife Mia, their baby Mikael and the manager of the group Skat. Jof, Mia and Mikael symbolize the holy family as they are coincidentally named after Joseph; Virgin Mary except the baby is not named after Jesus but the archangel Michael. Jof is portrayed in the film as someone who is a maker of songs and melodies and has visions of the Virgin Mary which shows how he interprets