215 - The Seventh Seal, 1957, Sweden. Dir. Ingmar Bergman.
The sun thrusts itself through obsidian clouds. A chorus belts its strident chords.
A sable bird appears above, wings locked in soaring flight, riding and gliding a thermal, suspended as though not flying, as though sitting in mid-air, backed by the black brume, angry with pregnant rain, backlit by the white sun, crushing with hot rage.
The mountains slope down to the sea. A voice speaks with apocalyptic finality, quoting Revelation 8:1 and 6.
And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
Prepare to hear the sound.
Two horses stand at the water's edge, dark shadows against the gray foam, heads down, lapping the surf, unbitted, unbridled, unsaddled, unaware of what is to come.
The Knight lies asleep on the rocky shore. A black blanket sprawls beneath his bones. He sleeps in his mail, a Maltese Cross across his breast, his right hand gripping his half-sheathed sword.
His lies still. His breast beneath the cross does not rise and fall with the waves.
The Squire lies asleep downshore, lying in the clothes of a Fool, spread out like a snow angel, head back, face out, fully and thoroughly still. The seadrink licks the crags.
The horses now stand in the roiling water, their tree twig legs branched crookedly beneath their meaty weight.
The Knight now lies with his eyes wide. He looks right. He breathes. He examines the ivory foam.
The Squire stirs, his right hand gripping his dagger's handle. He rolls over, returning to slumber.
The Knight wades into the shallows. He cups up water onto his face and neck, to wet to wake. He turns and kneels, his knobbed knees squat on the callous stone.
He prays, his palms pressed, his fingers stretched, like flying buttresses pressing his hand cathedral heavenward.
The hard white light bleaches the side of his blanched face.
He stands. He strides. Lensward. The pebble-level camera vignettes, the rounded corners waning into blackness. The camera pans. Swivels right. Looks directly on the foregrounded chess set. Crossfades to the crashing surge.
The sun sits centered on the horizon, the boundary line slicing its center, the light spilling over the water, like a burst of fire on the edge of the Earth, an explosion at the world's end.
Death disposes on the rocky shore. A pale rider standing in black robe.
The Knight grapples with his hands, paws through his pack, for what we do not know. He senses the adverse presence.
Who are you?
I am Death.
You have come for me?
I have been at your side for a long time.
The Knight knows. Death asks if he is prepared. We remember that the angels are prepared. Prepared to sound the trumpets. The Knight says his flesh is afraid but he is not. Death outstretches his right arm, spreads wide his robe, starts, files forward to fill the frame with Cimmerian shade.
The Knight enjoins him to delay.
You all say that. But I give no respite.
The Knight challenges Death to a game of chess. He knows he plays. He has witnessed it in paintings.
As long as I resist you, I live. If I win, you set me free.
And with that entreaty we catapult forth one of the greatest premises in the history of film.
If I can beat Death, then I will live.
As well as the concept that a painting can be a spiritual text, which can be read to gain understanding.
We have covered the first five minutes of the film. For the next hour and a half, we will follow the Knight on his journey, with his Squire, with a Medieval travelling jester show, a Mary and Joseph and baby, a Witch, a Monk, a Blacksmith, a Church Painter, a group of Flagellants, and Death himself pretending to be a priest, to see if the Knight can defeat Death.
Bergman introduces the film in the opening title card--
It is the middle of the 14th century. Antonius Block and his squire, after long years as crusaders in the Holy Land, have at last returned to their native Sweden, a land ravaged by the Black Plague.
The film invites repeated viewings. And offers the viewer to reckon his own view.
One possibility, that death cannot be defeated.
You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper. - Robert Alton Harris.
Perhaps by film's end we will see this dance of death.
Another, that death has already been destroyed.
Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? - 1 Corinthians 15:54b-55.
One dies. Afterwards, one lives forever. In a world of bliss and no pain.
Bergman's view seems not so optimistic. The film presents more problems than solutions, more questions than answers. He indicts faith, detailing his grievances.
As Death fells a tree with a saw, he informs Skat, a performer, that his contract has been annulled.
The prosecution rests.
Next, the defense.
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