Directed by Ingmar Bergman, the movie is in Swedish. If you watch it, make sure to keep the Swedish language sound track and use English subtitles. I watched a dubbed over English version once, and it was horrible. The dubbed version did not match the subtitle translation at all. Some of the lines made no sense and were read without emotion or feel for timing. This version robbed the film of its power.
The script located at the International Movie Script Database is an even better translation than the subtitles on my DVD from the Criterion Collection. http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Seventh-Seal,-The.html
The Seventh Seal is the story of a knight and his squire, just returned from the crusades. Death, an actual character in the story, is about to take them. The knight engages in a game of chess with Death. As long as the game goes on, they will live.
An English professor at Western Carolina University, Dr. Terry Nienhuis, introduced me to this movie. We were only going to watch a clip of it in his film class. But when he stopped the movie and turned up the lights, I almost yelled at him, "What are you doing?"
I remember the look of surprise on his face. He gave a thumbs up and said, "Okay, we'll keep going with it."
The movie's themes probably speak more to me than others.
I was raised in a devoutly evangelical Christian home. The "evangelical" part is the key.
My memories of church and religion during my childhood, on through my teenage years, are not good ones. As a teenager, I began to have serious questions about what I was being told to believe. I began to look for a different set of answers than what I had been taught, which now seemed like no answers at all. Unfortunately, most of the time all I could manage was an expression of anger. I am sad to say that all of this alienated me from a lot of good people in a small town in North Carolina where I grew up.
This film, The Seventh Seal, framed my doubts and questions better than anything I had previously come across. The language is poetic, the images stark and startling.
As I got older, though, I began to understand the role of religion in giving people hope. The actual truth may just be too dark for us to fathom. As Patrick Swayze said in an interview not long before he died of pancreatic cancer, "Hope is a very fragile thing, in any person's life."
I've tried showing this film to others, and I've yet to meet anyone who appreciates it like I do. I don't know if they are consciously trying to avoid the ideas of the movie, or if it is a working of their subconscious mind, a sort of defense mode.
Dr. Nienhuis and I disagreed over the ending of the movie. He thought it was a happy ending, with rain washing away the tears of the principal characters. That was not my take, though Ingmar Bergman uses an exchange between the squire, the knight, and the knight's wife to give the best possible advice when they are standing at the edge with Death:
KNIGHT
From our darkness, we call out to Thee, Lord.
Have mercy on us because we are small and
frightened and ignorant.
JONS
(bitterly)
In the darkness where You are supposed to be,
where all of us probably are.... In the
darkness You will find no one to listen to Your
cries or be touched by Your sufferings. Wash
Your tears and mirror Yourself in Your
indifference.
KNIGHT
God, You who are somewhere, who must be
somewhere, have mercy upon us.
JONS
I could have given you an herb to purge you of
your worries about eternity. Now it seems to be
too late. But in any case, feel the immense
triumph of this last minute when you can still
roll your eyes and move your toes.
KARIN
Quiet, quiet.
JONS
I shall be silent, but under protest.
It is wonderful, wonderful dialogue- some of the best ever put on film in my opinion, and the story is full of such terrific writing. The earthy feel of the entire movie also seems true to what medieval times must have been like, though of course I would not know for certain.
I'll close this entry with another excerpt from the film. The knight, played by a young Max Von Sydow (he was only 26 at the time, though he looks older in the story), has stopped to have a meal in the countryside with a group of traveling actors. It is a brief respite from the knight's game of chess with Death.
I take it as a lesson on how to live my life.
KNIGHT
People are troubled by so much.
MIA
It's always better when one is two. Have you no
one of your own?
KNIGHT
Yes, I think I had someone.
MIA
And what is she doing now?
KNIGHT
I don't know.
MIA
You look so solemn. Was she your beloved?
KNIGHT
We were newly married and we played together.
We laughed a great deal. I wrote songs to her
eyes, to her nose, to her beautiful little
ears. We went hunting together and at night we
danced. The house was full of life ...
MIA
Do you want some more strawberries?
KNIGHT
(shakes his head)
Faith is a torment, did you know that? It is
like loving someone who is out there in the
darkness but never appears, no matter how
loudly you call.
MIA
I don't understand what you mean.
KNIGHT
Everything I've said seems meaningless and
unreal while I sit here with you and your
husband. How unimportant it all becomes
suddenly.
He takes the bowl of milk in his hand and drinks deeply from it several
times. Then he carefully puts it down and looks up, smiling.
MIA
Now you don't look so solemn.
KNIGHT
I shall remember this moment. The silence, the
twilight, the bowls of strawberries and milk,
your faces in the evening light. Mikael
sleeping, Jof with his lyre. I'll try to
remember what we have talked about. I'll carry
this memory between my hands as carefully as
if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh
milk.
He turns his face away and looks out towards the sea and the colorless gray
sky.
KNIGHT
And it will be an adequate sign -- it will be
enough for me.
He rises, nods to the others and walks down towards the forest. JOF continues
to play on his lyre. MIA stretches out on the grass.
The KNIGHT picks up his chess game and carries it towards the beach. It is
quiet and deserted; the sea is still.
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