The
movie, “The Seventh Seal”, by Ingmar Bergman is an essay on the existence of
God, and the different relationships that people have with God and with the Church.
Set in 14th century
Sweden, as the Black Plague ravages the land, a once-religious Knight and his
bawdy Squire find themselves washed up on the rocky beach of home after ten
years of fighting in the Church’s crusades.
The first person the Knight encounters
is Death, white-faced and cloaked in a black, hooded robe. They agree to play a game of chess together;
the Knight privately plotting to use this delay to accomplish one good deed,
one meaningful act, before Death takes him.
On the other side of the scale from
the disillusioned Knight and his faithless Squire, we see the idyllic life of
the Juggler with his actress wife and their toddler son. Travelling through the country in a horse-drawn
wagon, the Juggler joyfully accepts the unexplained vision of the Virgin Mary
teaching the Christ-child to walk.
Meanwhile, the Knight and Squire
enter a church building, where the Squire engages a muralist in conversation
about his paintings of Death and the Plague, while the Knight confesses his sins,
doubts, and chess strategy to a black-robed priest. He does not realize until too late that his
confessor is actually Death himself, and that he has been tricked into
revealing what he should have kept hidden.
As the Juggler and his wife, wearing
painted faces and fool’s costumes, sing a song to entertain the crowd at the
small town, they are interrupted by a horrific procession of penitents who
march in, screaming, wailing, and lashing themselves, carrying
larger-than-life-sized crosses and crucifixes.
Everything stops during a brief harangue full of hellfire and damnation
by a church official who is travelling with the penitents.
And here we see that the Church of
that time is portrayed as using the people’s fear of the plague to provoke them
into terrified submission; just as they had done 10 years before this to
convince moneyed or powerful Knights to abandon their homes for a supposedly
righteous crusade into far countries, to kill and murder in the name of the
Church. Meanwhile some Church officials
stayed behind and robbed the then-defenseless populace. (When the Knight reaches his castle at the
end, it seems stripped of everything except for his Wife.)
But it appears that neither the
Knight nor the Squire are moved to anything other than disgust at the parade of
self-made victims as they again take up their crosses and disappear into the
landscape.
After the Knight and Squire enjoy an
idyllic interlude in the lingering evening twilight, eating strawberries and
drinking milk in the company of the Juggler and his family, they embark on a
journey through the forest together --- at night --- where they encounter,
again, a group of guards and church officials bent on carrying out a sentence
of death by fire upon a young woman for supposedly being a witch and bringing
the plague. As one of the guards had implied
before, it doesn’t matter if she’s guilty or not; someone has to take the blame
for the plague, and the church has chosen her.
Having left the execution, and resting
by themselves in the forest, the Knight continues his game of chess with
Death. The Juggler, eyes wide with fear,
sees Death at the chessboard, but his wife, though she does not see Death,
accepts his urging, and they take the wagon away through the forest. The Knight, seeing them leave, tries to delay
the game to give them time to escape, but Death takes his Queen. So, the Knight turns and “accidentally”
knocks over half the chess pieces. He
claims to not remember how they were positioned, but Death remembers, so the
game continues. When the Knight’s king
is checkmated, he confuses Death by smiling in defeat, knowing that he has
succeeded in his task by allowing the Juggler’s family to escape.
In the end, the Juggler, in the
sunshine, sees them in the rain-washed distance --- Death, leading them all
away --- with the curious exception of the Knight’s wife, and the young woman
who had followed the Squire; the only two who had actually welcomed Death into
the room, into their lives. And the
Juggler and his family walk away down the road, to the sound of an angelic
choir echoing as if in a cathedral.
Comment --- This movie, one of the
most influential ever made, is actually better for being shot in black and
white, as the stark contrast of light and shadow mirrors our questions about
good and evil, life and death, God and Satan.
It rightly ranks as one of the best movies for having the courage to ask
the kinds of questions everyone should ask.
Where is the evidence of God? How
can we believe without evidence, given the negative influences even from the
church? And how can we not believe,
given the evidence we have? But “The
Seventh Seal” does not answer the questions.
