Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Starring Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bengt Ekerot, Nils Poppe, Max von Sydow, Bibi Andersson, Inga Landgre and Ake Fridell
Here we have yet another legendary film-maker who I first became acquainted with in those legendary (redundancy alert) Roger Ebert books. If memory serves me correctly, it was actually in the very back of the 1987 tome that contained a list entitled "13 for Halloween." One of these was Cries and Whispers, a movie that basically sounded like Terms of Endearment with approximately 48% more death. That recommendation made me curious enough to look up "Bergman, Ingmar" in the handy-dandy index and search out the full-length reviews. Nowadays, Bergman is wildly considered one of the best directors of all time and a veritable smorgasbord of his films are available on the Criterion Channel, making one of his films - of which I had seen exactly zero - a no-brainer on this little buffet.
It really wasn't hard to make a selection. The movie that initially made Ingmar Bergman pop on the worldwide cinema stage, The Seventh Seal has pretty much every theme that made this guy a favorite of stuffy film professors the world over. It's got death (literally and figuratively) in an uncaring world, a bleak setting, knights, you name it. Overall, I enjoyed it, although I found it a bit dry at times and lacking some of the flair that I've seen from some other A+ directors. But we'll get to that in due time.
The film opens with a lovely bit of narration quoting the Book of Revelations that gives us the title of our film. Fade in on a knight waking up on a beach - this is Antonius Block (the unquestionably awesome Max von Sydow), returning to his native Sweden after fighting in the Crusades. The embodiment of Death itself (Bengt Ekerot) soon appears on the beach, stating that it is Block's time to go. Block responds with the only sane answer: a game of chess with his life hanging in the balance. The game continues throughout the events of the film in various intervals in a framing device that is actually integrated quite well into the narrative.
Block and his noble squire Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand) hit the road into the deepest, darkest Sweden so that the story of this film can get underway. Bjornstrand gets top billing in the film for his portrayal of Jons, but the film is really an ensemble piece about all of the various side characters that Block and Jons meet along the way toward destination afterlife. The film has a pretty deep cast, all things considered. There is a trio of actors who plan to put on a show for a nearby village, a well-meaning but simple blacksmith, and a mute girl who is saved from a rape attempt by Jons. The characters are all distinct enough to warrant me remembering most of their names, which instantly gives it about 10 Fonzi cool points over Game of Thrones.
The Seventh Seal is a movie that is only vaguely concerned with offering a conventional three-act structure. See, folks, this film is all about philosophy. Block, as the condemned man who meets Death face to face, spends the entire running time wondering if anything awaits him if he loses the game. It's a subject that I would dare say everyone, even the most devout of Atheists, has no doubt asked themselves at some point in their life, and it's a universal topic that gets explored in this film to its fullest. An interesting contrast develops between the philosophical Block and the extremely cynical and at times nihilistic Jons. On paper, Block is your protagonist of the story, but it's Jons who steals the thing, waxing about how pointless everything is in the world that they now inhabit.
Did I mention that this film takes place during the Black Death? Well, it does. Folks, the most annoying thing I heard online last year was every Zoomer reaction video artist watching Jaws for the first time and exclaiming "this is JUST like Covid, y'all!" Um, no, it isn't. Neither is this movie. What Bergman DOES want to convey here, at least in my little pea brain, is how dark times like a deadly plague tend to make people search for deeper meanings than the ones we can see.
About ten years ago, I remember going to see the Liam Neeson film The Gray. While it was primarily a survival story about fleeing killer wolves in the scary Alaskan wilderness, it had characters who repeatedly stopped to talk - at length - about the ultimate question of whether or not there is a God. And it all felt insanely shoehorned. It doesn't feel forced in the world of The Seventh Seal, due primarily to lack of a conventional narrative to stop the musings. Much like the anti-war machine message of Godzilla, the ambiguous questions posed in this film were an aspect of the film that I enjoyed a lot, delivered by an auteur who was genuine and not just trying to please the twelve people on Twitter who rule the world.
The philosophy of The Seventh Seal works very well. The characters are also likable enough, especially Jons, who starts the movie's running time as an asshole in your mind but grows on you like a fungus. There ARE times, however, where the jerky structure serves to make the movie drag a little bit, in particular the various bits of the show business family running into trouble with the yokel locals that almost grind the movie to a halt on a couple of occasions. I also commented earlier how this movie doesn't have a whole lot of cinematic flair. The film may not have skillful shots that call attention to themselves (with the exception of the iconic final shot), but it is impressively done, well-written and epic in scope, especially on a limited budget.
Rating time: *** out of ****. While it's not exactly my cup of tea, I can definitely see why this is considered one of the greatest films of all time. And if you're in the mood for the continuing adventures of Death, here you go:
0 comments:
Post a Comment