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Summary: A Compelling, if Somewhat Dated, Classic of Existentialism
Review: I recently watched the Criterion edition release of this film, The Seventh Seal, with some friends. Although the film's techniques -- innovative and startling in 1957 -- are somewhat cliche today, the film still packs a powerful message, which is that although we cannot know if God exists, it is still possible for us to perform meaningful acts in the time allotted to us. The story focuses on the story of a Swedish knight, Antonius Block, returning to Sweden from the Crusades -- played by the ageless Max von Sydow. The knight and his squire, Jons, are on the way home through a land ravaged by the Black Plague. On a lonely beach, the knight encounters Death, played with admirable restraint, and a good dose of dry humor, by Bengt Ekerot. Before Death claims Block's life, the knight challenges him to a game of chess -- if Block wins, he goes free; otherwise, when the game is over, Death will come for him. In that Death is busy, the game is renewed throughout the movie. The movie also focuses on a troupe of actors who are traveling along the same road as the knight. Block knows that Death plans to come for the young actor and his family, and by prolonging his game with Death and thereby distracting him, he enables the young family to escape. The movie, although obviously shot with a very small production budget and featuring a very minimalist approach (it could well be a stage play), is haunting -- one thinks about the movie's simple lessons for days afterward. The film has often been parodied -- by Woody Allen in Love and Death, or in the recent "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" where Death is forced to play games such as Twister and Battleship with the film's heroes -- but it is still well worth watching. The Criterion edition features both a Swedish and English-dubbed soundtrack, as well as a commentary track from a noted film critic.
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Summary: Rock Solid Restoration
Review: Must have DVD for film buffs. This Criterion DVD includes marvelously restored audio and video, and an excellent commentary by Peter Cowie on alternative audio track. The extras on this DVD go a long way to educate neophytes, like myself, in Bergman's filmography, and to enhance any viewer's experience.
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Summary: One of a Kind Masterpiece
Review: Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest films ever made, which may scare away some viewers. The film is also a meditation on death and religion, which may also make some people hesitant to watch it. I know I avoided it for some time, but the film is really pretty enjoyable. If you consider yourself to be a true film buff, you really have to see this movie. Max von Sydow, in the role that made him famous, stars as a disillusioned knight returning from the crusades in the 14th century. He is travelling with his squire, and they meet a number of people along the way, including an acting troop and a blacksmith and his wife. One of these visitors is Death, and the Knight tries to bargain for his life. Death accepts the knight's offer of a game of chess. As long as the game continues, the knight can live. The movie is laden with symbolism, often of a religious nature, and filmed in stark black and white. Although the movie is serious and cerebral in tone, there is also a surprising element of humor and lightness. If you approach this film with an open mind, you will probably end up enjoying it, although it isn't for all audiences. Highly recommended for discerning film fans. EXTRAS: The DVD includes such extras as the original trailer and a written narrative of Bergman's career. The best feature is the audiotrack recorded by film historian, Peter Cowie. He walks the viewer through the film, pointing out relevant symbolism as well as Bergman's directorial touches. Fascinating!
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Summary: Grim but timeless allegory
Review: Death haunts the medieval landscape both as a thing and a character. The two people who show the most doubt and least fear of God are, in turn, the most humane. The big problems/issues in life (of love, disease, religion,) pose just as many problems then as now. A movie to suit both the intellectual film student and the somewhat above average moviegoer. I certainly want to watch it a couple hundred more times as it seems to be a movie that will provide many more questions with each viewing.
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Summary: Life without God
Review: The Seventh Seal is perhaps one of the greatest works of art of our time, as it captures the central issue in life - do you believe in God, or is God Dead?
The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman in a sense parallels the Wasteland by TS Eliot - it captures the spiritual bankruptry of the twentieth century, of a world without God.
The knight typifies post-enlightenment thought - he wants knowledge, fact, not belief.
But Christianity IS belief, for we cannot know God through the world of senses! God entered Time only once, through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. For the last 2000 years, we can only believe in this historical event.
Will you be like the Knight when you face death? Or like the couple who believes? And what does this mean to your daily life?
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Summary: For new commers, a Classic work of art.
Review: I firts saw Igmar Bergman's, The Seventh Seal, when it was theatrically re-released in my contrie, five years ago, and so, it became one of my strongest pilars of film faith in what quality concerns me. Bergman dares to ask the right questions at the wrong time, getting away with it. What he thought was a small film he did in summer with his friends, was actually, one of the finnest movie pieces ever made, briging this art-industry to a real state of mental challenge, the nature of God, the meaning of life you did ask in your childhood, Bergman puts it on the screen with an elegance long forgotten. Criterion does an exelente work with the DVD release, finally you can see it with all it's spledorous visuals, as one of the best black and white fotografies made in this firts 100 years of film making can be seen as it was saw in 1957. After all, what is the point of a good film making, if you can't see it, as it was originally intended, so, delivered it is, enjoy it.
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Summary: This is the most boring movie I've ever seen!
Review: I first heard of this movie when watching Last Action Hero. I decided it looked interesting. But when I finally rented it I found out that it's not even in English. Not one person in the movie speaks english. There's English Subtitles. Also it was really long and boring.
It was the most boring movie I've ever seen in my life. I have a couson who thinks this movie is interesting and good. He must be crazy to think it's good. Do not rent or buy this it's completly boring and not in the language of Sweeden.
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Summary: Remains visually one of the most stunning films ever made
Review: THE SEVENTH SEAL is like the cinematic unfolding of a painting by Brueghel, whose canvasses recounted in massive detail a wide range of vagaries of the human condition, especially in their more macabre aspects. This extraordinary film likewise spins out one remarkable vision after another, whether it is a warrior returning from the Crusades engaged in a chess match with Death, or a man receiving a vision of the Madonna walking with the infant Christ, or images of the plague, or an unforgettable procession of flagellants beating themselves to atone for the sins of the age. Ingmar Bergman employs many of his usual great actors and actresses in this film. Max von Sydow is riveting as the world-weary knight Antonius Block, who, tired and disillusioned as he is, nonetheless resists Death's advances. Gunnar Björnstrand plays his companion, the squire Jöns, who is an unwavering tower of strength in the midst of the death and chaos all around him. Bengt Ekerot was not a Bergman regular, but he became the most famous and most successful personification of death in the history of film. Absolutely no one who has seen this film can forget his eerie presence throughout the whole of the film. When the film BILL AND TED'S BOGUS JOURNEY was made, Death in that film was transparently copied directly from Bengt Ekerot's character. The real stars of this film are the director and his cinematographer Gunnar Fischer. Very, very few films ever made have as many famous and unforgettable shots as this one. Many of the images even today have an almost overwhelming power, such any of a number of shots of Bengt Ekerot in his black garb and white face, beckoning with outstretched arm Antonius Block to come with him. The final image in the film, with death leading his party along the crest of a hill is haunting and profoundly moving. It is also a widely imitated shot. One thing that makes this movie especially moving is the way Bergman accepts many of the precepts and beliefs of that time, and yet gives them an undeniably modern twist. Antonius Block's crisis of belief, generated by the horrors he has witnessed both abroad and upon his return to Europe, reflects the existential crises many were feeling in the 1950s. Yet, the film ends on an odd note of hope, as the itinerant entertainer and his family, who witness the Dance of Death from afar, survive and carry on. Death has come and taken, but nonetheless, human life continues.
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Summary: An incontestable existentialist masterpiece
Review: The Seventh Seal is the kind of movie that Ayn Rand would have liked, because it is extremely efficient, like an inexorable clockwork. There is nothing superfluous in it : and at 95 minutes, Bergman could have added a half-hour and it would still look efficient. Every shot, every move, every word counts. Some shots are Biblical-like in setting, some others are nightmarish, but all are masterful. What is The Seventh Seal about ? It is about a Swedish knight called Antonius Block, and his squire, returning to their country from the Crusades only to find it in the throes of the Black Plague. At the beginning of the movie, Death comes to claim Block's life, but the latter defies the grim reaper to a game of chess. While they play, Block and his squire encouter the grim consequences of the Black Plague, and confront the absence of God. The Seventh Seal is definitively existentialist, much like Bergman was at that period of his life. Block is tarauded by doubt : he cannot accept Christianity without evidence, but on the other hand he cannot accept death without God. His squire, Jöns, has no such scruples, and he asks him as they witness the fiery execution of a girl by priests : "Who will take care of that child. God, the devil, the nothingness? The nothingness, perhaps?". Jöns is a rough, perhaps callous man, and he finds his answers, like many other characters, in the enjoyment of the here and now. He is also an entertaining commentator on human nature, and seems more like the voice of Reason, where Block is the voice of Doubt. What about Death ? Death is about as close we have to an atheistic counterpart to God - a terrifying, primal fear materialized into sentient agency. Unlike the Christian Big Brother, however, Death does not hold any grudge against us - as he says, he is "unknowing", and deaf to our complaints for the simple reason that he has a job to do. In The Seventh Seal, he is sinister, but not malicious.
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Summary: A milestone in film, one of Bergman's many masterpieces.
Review: This film, along with the rest of his towering masterpieces, confirms Bergman as the one of the finest and most genuine artists to take up the craft of film (and, less-known to English speaking audiences, the theater). The Seventh Seal was filmed in 38 days, with a miniscule budget. Reflecting on this, the film is a miracle -- rarely has such cinematic grace and dramatic power been achieved in film so effortlessly. Responding to another reviewer, who claimed that the film is "cartoon masquerading as philosophy," it can only be said that to decipher an entirely philosophic interpretation of The Seventh Seal, as in all of Bergman's films, is to miss the totality of its meaning. The secret of Bergman, as with his forefather Strindberg, is that he doesn't analyse, he dramatizes. The reviewer, perhaps fresh out of a poor course in philosophy, uses trite arguments against existentialism to claim that this is an unworthy intellectual piece (this is all very silly). There is an existentialist thread in Bergman's thought, as with most thinker's of his generation. But The Seventh Seal is not a film about negation, as the reviewer mistakenly suggests. To Death's question as to whether Antonius has gained by his delay, Antonius replies, assuredly, that he has. This is Bergman's affirmation. The use of allegory in the film is what has always fascinated me most. It is the height of maturity in Scandinavian allegory. The danger of the expressionism, symbolism, and allegory is that one loses sight of the nuances of reality. Unlike Camus (since the dear French thinkers have already been mentioned), whose heavy-handed philosophic characters, allegory and symbolism often made his work seem contrived and mechanical, Bergman uses Death as a distant abstraction, appearing in our brighter moments (returning from a long exile, an innocent moment with wild strawberries) to spoil the party, so to speak. This is how abstraction really works -- a detached reason that clutches without mercy to a simpler reality. One could go on forever about the merits of the film, which is one of the few standout milestones in cinema. As for the DVD release, the name Criterion should say it all. A brilliant restoration.
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