The Seventh Seal

3 Pages 760 Words

The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal is, perhaps, the most well known movie from one of the world’s greatest directors. Ingmar Bergman’s apocalyptic vision of the struggle of mankind to overcome extinction still rings true today. By taking a closer look at the movie, we can see that there are questions that must be asked before we can fully understand how well it applies in more modern times. How did Berman chose the time frame of the movie, and does it apply to more modern times? To answer these questions we must first look at the underlying concepts and questions that Bergman poses in the film.
Berman’s film is set in the mediaeval time period. This was a time of much hardship in the lives of all classes of people. The people of this time period had to deal with numerous wars, famine, and most of all disease. In a time before antibiotics, mankind had no defense against any type of disease, especially the horrific plague that struck Europe during this time period. Basically death lurked around every corner for anyone living at this time.
The knight, the main character in this movie, spends the whole movie running from the death that he has faced for most of his life. In the opening scenes we see the knight first meet death. Death explains that he has followed him for a long time, and proposes that the two play a game of chess for the knight’s soul. Eventually the knight will lose, die, and death will receive his soul. To Bergman the whole chess game represents man’s natural urge to resist the inevitable.
The whole underlying theme to Berman’s film is why god seems absent from the world. The knight desperately seeks some sign of god throughout the whole film. The knight, as well as Berman, cannot understand how god can be present in a life of so much death. Eventually Berman shows us the knight’s symbol of god through the simple beauty of the family of Mary and Joseph. The simple sight of the happy e...