The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) stars Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand and Nils Poppe.
It is perhaps the most remembered film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, especially in some countries because of its powerful religious iconography and imagery.
Plot
A medieval knight receives a curious visit: Death comes to take him away. He proposes to play a game of chess: if he loses, he will go with the Death and if he wins, the Death will spare his life.
The Movie
A deeply beautiful movie of those that are no longer made. Those were other times given more to philosophical reflection than now, although it comes perfectly in line with the situation of the Coronavirus, and this generalized madness due to the Black Death of our days.
Here Bergman works with two of his best-known male icons, Max von Sydow and Gunnar Björnstrand, and takes us to the medieval world, in which the fear of dying presided over everything, and tells us from a 1957 film: the fear of Death has always been there, and the human being is so vulgar that he can only run or laugh. Many choose to run, only one to laugh and play the game of chess. (En este párrafo cambié/eliminé cosas que no me parecían claras. Si quieres las añado, pero me las tienes que explicar jajajaja).
The film stands out for its images, despite being a film with a lot of dialogues (like all Bergman’s films), with static framing and, obviously and as always, a film that stands out for the performances of its protagonists, always at the service of the famous director.
It is one of Bergman’s films that speaks to us more directly, with a unique frankness: it is Death and I don’t have to hide it, there is hardly any sound and nobody cries when watching it, it would all be too easy and it is in this sense that the Swede stands out: giving us a hidden world from the apparent simplicity that leads us, almost always, to the grotesque.
A film with many, many contrasts and one of his least subtle films: it talks about philosophy almost directly (we are missing Kierkegaard to enlighten us, he would be busy “flirting”) and poses a comedy within a drama that is within a film that reflects on the (very theatrical) way of making movies. It plays with the misunderstandings of those who know what they are doing and doesn’t consider the spectator an idiot: it gives him a clear argument to then “cheat” on him with something else: a work full of content that won’t leave you uncomfortable, but it won’t make you want to go fulfill your supposed obligations either: we’ve come here to be here, let’s take advantage of the time to, precisely, waste it.
Our opinion
It is deep and mysterious and tries to confuse us. An intelligent cinema that unfortunately is no longer made: an eternal work from another time that comes to tell us from an important guy that, deep down, we are as important as we are dispensable.
With coronavirus or with the black plague, with or without a bike.
El Séptimo Sello (1957), de Ingmar Bergman
