The Seventh Seal, annoying perfection

When asked why I started Filmes Fodásticos (Fuckastic Movies in English), I answer that it is for people to feel tempted to watch movies like The Seventh Seal.

There is always this curious belief by people who simply go to the movies that the movie must "show" something or "teach" something or whatever. As if art (cinema is an art, remember?) had some utilitarian function.

Ingmar Bergman becomes annoyingly perfect in building this movie. They say about psychological plot or film about death, but the story shows an almost psychotic clarity about an eternal subject: fear, and, in a special way, the fear of being alone. Hence the despair of God's absence. Antonius Block, the knight who perceives to have wasted ten years of his life on the Crusades recognizes: "I cry for him (God) in the dark but there is no one there."

Curiously, the only fantastic figure present is the Death who, with his black cloak, says to accompany the knight throughout his journey. Block proposes to the entity a game of chess, not to delay its departure but to speculate about God (without success). The game runs through the entire movie until the horseman cheats, and in a seemingly suicidal move, manages to save the life of a couple of artists of a troupe: Jose, Maria, and his son.

Beside the squire Jons, who, unlike the traditional auxiliaries, is literate, philosopher and atheist, the knight returns to his castle through a scene of destruction in which are mixed black plague, Romanesque architecture, the burning of a teenage witch and the passage of a multitude of pilgrims practicing self-flagellation.

The end of the movie is not equally palatable to moviegoers. Asking who wins the game of chess is irrelevant when we learn that Death never loses. And will never lose. The artists lead their wagon to the horizon, while Joseph, who is a sort of seer, observes: "The strict Lord of Death put them all to dance." Maria doubts about her husband's visions. And the child smiles.

#bergman #review