{"id":9148,"date":"2013-09-03T00:35:50","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T04:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=9148"},"modified":"2015-04-18T21:22:09","modified_gmt":"2015-04-19T01:22:09","slug":"ingmar-bergman-the-seventh-seal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2013\/09\/03\/ingmar-bergman-the-seventh-seal\/","title":{"rendered":"Ingmar Bergman: The Seventh Seal<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Review of The Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition.\r\nSpine<\/strong>: #11\r\nRelease Date<\/strong>: June 16, 2009\r\nScreen captures below are taken from The Criterion Collection Blu-ray disc, but resolution has been reduced from 1920x1080 to 900x506 and slightly compressed. You may click on them to view the 900x506 image.<\/em><\/pre>\n
Is this Bergman\u2019s most famous film? It must be. Certainly, years before I saw it I knew what Death looked like as he famously sat on a chilly beach and played chess against Max von Sydow. Because I\u2019d heard so much about it, it was the first Bergman film I ever watched, followed quickly by a handful of others, each of which I liked more than The Seventh Seal<\/em> (1957). Today, it is\u00a0well down my list of favorite Bergman films, but that’s not saying much:\u00a0I still admire it a great deal. I love the sense of place and of time as well as the look at how a variety of people confront the uncertainty of God and the relative certainty of death.\u00a0Plus, besides a play for television they’d collaborated on, this film\u00a0brought together Bergman\u00a0and von Sydow, who plays Antonius Block, the existential knight who is just returning to plague-ridden Sweden from the Crusades.<\/p>\n
\"seventh-seal-cover\"<\/p>\n
Many of us now may picture Von Sydow as an old man since he has been acting\u00a0for the past 65 years. He was the ill-fated Father Merrin in The Exorcist<\/em> in 1971, and from what I heard\u00a0his\u00a0performance at 82 years old was the only thing worthwhile in\u00a02011’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close<\/em>. But here he is, young yet still formidable, playing what could be his most famous role despite a long and prolific career over more than half a century.<\/p>\n
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The film begins on a rugged beach. Block is returning to plague-ridden Sweden from the Crusades, where he must have seen any and all kinds of horror while he attempted to\u00a0advance his religious faith by the sword. In all of that horror, he never saw God.\u00a0Now, when Block returns to Sweden, Death, whom Block had evaded several times,\u00a0is there on the beach waiting for him.<\/p>\n
\"Seventh-Seal-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n
The time has come to find out if all\u00a0he fought for means anything at all, and\u00a0Block is not that certain. To forestall his demise for a little longer, Block challenges death to a game of chess.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, outside of this metaphor (Block and Death will continue to bandy wits over chess while the real Block leaves the beach), Block and his earthy squire J\u00f6ns (the great Gunnar Bj\u00f6rnstrand) travel across the plagued land to Block\u2019s home. We follow them as they encounter various doomed people, some more spiritually minded, like Block, and others more, well, earthy, like J\u00f6ns.<\/p>\n
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Though I\u2019ve seen this film many times, its metaphors and spiritual questions never stand out for me, as much as I appreciate them on some level.\u00a0They just feel a bit heavy-handed and, unlike many other Bergman films that delve into the spiritual, lack nuance. That or they are very nuanced and it\u2019s going to take many more viewings for me to fully appreciate them\u00a0— a strong possibility.<\/p>\n
\"Seventh-Seal-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n
But The Seventh Seal<\/em> still holds a place in my heart for its strong depiction of medieval spirituality and the brutality the human spirit has often\u00a0encountered and even brought upon itself, all through brilliant imagery.\u00a0Surely this is very much the point, but it\u2019s like looking at a medieval painting of the Last Judgment (the movie\u2019s name comes from the Book of Revelation, after all) as Death efficiently cuts down the human race.<\/p>\n
\"the-seventh-seal-banner\"<\/a><\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit terrifying, but it\u2019s impossible to turn away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trevor reviews Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film, The Seventh Seal<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[403],"tags":[642,779,602],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-9148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ingmar-bergman","tag-criterion-collection","tag-film","tag-swedish"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/seventh-seal-cover.jpg?fit=348%2C490&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-2ny","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9148"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15654,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9148\/revisions\/15654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9148"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}