Directed by Ingmar Bergman
“Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way - despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of?”
Woody Allen calls Bergman’s The Seventh Seal a sinister fairy tale. In a sense it is as it involves a fantastical being (Oh, Death!) but it is a tale of maturity for those who have experienced the world and are perplexed by it – not children. It is the tale of a journey, or more accurately, an urgent quest by a weary man of intellect and experience, who feels death is near, to find meaning in a life that seems at times senseless. Bergman offers a critique of the absurdity of faith and brings to light the natural sweetness of living and loving.
Sweetness such as sharing a simple meal of just picked wild strawberries and fresh milk. Or the touch of his wife’s hand on his face when he returns to his home to find her at the hearth after his ten-year absence. This story deals with the core ideas of love, self-sacrifice, pain, and death. The play between humor and darkness highlights the contradictory elements of human nature. The lightness of the family of actors contrasting with the darkness and cynicism of the troubled Knight and his misogynistic companion.
The film quotes the biblical book of Revelations: And when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.” There are scenes that are set in natural surroundings where the call of birds is quite audible – at the sea and in the forest. I wonder is the sounding of these winged creatures in these locations where one might feel closest to “god” intentional or happenstance.