The Seventh Seal

1957 • 96 minutter

Om denne film

Disillusioned and exhausted after a decade of battling in the Crusades, a knight (Max von Sydow) encounters Death on a desolate beach and challenges him to a fateful game of chess. Much studied, imitated, even parodied, but never outdone, Bergman’s stunning allegory of man’s search for meaning, The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet), was one of the benchmark foreign imports of America’s 1950s art-house heyday, pushing cinema’s boundaries and ushering in a new era of moviegoing.

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This is the first Swedish film I see in my life so far. Produced in the 1950s, it might be a little painful to watch; thus patience is required. The whole story is about how a knight, returned from crusade and supposed to die as he reached the shore, cheats the death by playing chess with him so that family could survive. Existentialism is the theme, expressed mainly through narrative. My favorite line, "people need to be scared by death," is perhaps the most compelling lesson I learn from this movie. Sometimes, people really need to think about what they dread so their lives can lived as meaningful as possible. The knight's characters, calmness and courage, enable him to live the rest of his life as he will without being bothered by the death

Overrated. Seriously, massively overrated. Good experimental piece but otherwise slow and uninteresting. I'm not an academia suckup, however, and I dislike the 'art for art's sake' crap.

Don't we all feel like the Knight who's living on borrowed time from death, trying to accomplish something worthwhile and searching the darkness for the hand of God? Could it be that the most noble quest in life is celebrating life itself?