In praise of The Sev­enth Seal – Ing­mar Bergman’s mono­chrome masterpiece

It’s 60 years since Ing­mar Bergman’s The Sev­enth Seal was released, and chances are you know what it looks like, even if you haven’t actu­al­ly seen it. The gloomy exis­ten­tial clas­sic, whose cen­tral motif is a chess game between a medieval knight and Death, has been par­o­died by the likes of Woody Allen, Mon­ty Python and the Mup­pets (twice). The sav­ing grace of Bill and Ted’s Bogus Jour­ney, the lack­lus­tre 1991 sequel to their hilar­i­ous Excel­lent Adven­ture, is a scene where William Sadler’s Death allows the heavy met­al-lov­ing heroes to choose the game that will decide their fate, lead­ing to the movie and Sadler’s best line: ​“you sunk my battleship”.

As a teenag­er I was aware of The Sev­enth Seal as the arche­typ­al art­house film – intim­i­dat­ing and impen­e­tra­ble. Its open­ing shots con­tain images of the sea and the sky in high-con­trast black-and-white, accom­pa­nied by quotes from the ​‘Book of Rev­e­la­tion’ and music from Erik Nordgren’s intense oper­at­ic score. Every­thing we know about the film and Bergman up to this point tells us it’s going to be hard work, and that answers won’t come eas­i­ly, if at all. But then the action begins: Bengt Ekerot’s Death arrives to claim the medieval knight, Anto­nius Block, and Anto­nius insti­gates the most the­atri­cal­ly sym­bol­ic, least arcane device imag­in­able: he chal­lenges Death to that infa­mous game of chess.

Bergman is best known as a film­mak­er, but he also worked in the­atre and wrote pro­lif­i­cal­ly for radio. From the moment Death and the knight sit down to play, The Sev­enth Seal unfolds with the nec­es­sary clar­i­ty of a radio play. Although the film’s cen­tral ques­tion about the exis­tence of god and the after­life is as lofty as they come, any attempts at express­ing it are made through omis­sion, by focussing on what we see and know. When in the open­ing lines Anto­nius tells death that his flesh is afraid of dying but he is not; or when his squire – speak­ing to a church painter – mocks the con­cept of death but grows queasy hear­ing about the rav­ages of the plague, Bergman is bring­ing our con­cerns con­stant­ly down to earth.

Whether bit­ter or sweet, the film’s most poignant moments are all about phys­i­cal­i­ty. The troupe of actors whose path will lat­er col­lide with that of the knight and his squire are intro­duced via a shot of them wak­ing from a care­free sleep, heads togeth­er on a bed of straw. Jof and Mia, the hus­band and wife of the trio, are tac­tile and inti­mate, and when we share in the first of Jof’s visions, in which he sees the Vir­gin Mary and child, these are not untouch­able saints, but a smil­ing moth­er teach­ing her chub­by tod­dler to walk bare­foot on the grass. The image draws its emo­tion­al res­o­nance not from reli­gion, but human­i­ty. Lat­er, when the two groups of char­ac­ters first meet and share a meal of milk and wild straw­ber­ries, Anto­nius’ thoughts turn to the plea­sures of food, music and com­pa­ny. When Death appears to pull him from the actors’ com­pa­ny and resume the fate­ful game, Block meets him with a light heart, even mock­ing him.

Encoun­ters with Death are often treat­ed more light­ly than those with oth­er humans. The film’s most har­row­ing sub­ject is by far the treat­ment and burn­ing at the stake of a young girl accused by her fel­low men of com­muning with the dev­il, where­as Death is ulti­mate­ly indif­fer­ent, and the sassi­ness with which he express­es it, iron­i­cal­ly, the source of much of the film’s humour. When he comes to col­lect Jonas Skat, the third mem­ber of the troupe, by saw­ing down a tree in which he is hid­ing, the actor’s futile plead­ing is as touch­ing as the scene’s slap­stick set­up is amusing.

The Sev­enth Seal is one of the first Ing­mar Bergman films to occu­py a more chal­leng­ing ter­rain, but it nonethe­less remains an earth­ly and acces­si­ble movie. Anto­nius, and by exten­sion the direc­tor, fre­quent­ly returns to his vague mus­ings on the exis­tence of god, but it’s only as the chess game draws to its end that the film’s true solu­tion to the prob­lem becomes clear. Death announces the inevitabil­i­ty of his win, and Anto­nius com­ments, almost relieved, that this means his secrets will be revexaled. ​“I have no secrets”, replies Death, ​“I am unknowing”.

The film is say­ing that death is a know­able phe­nom­e­non. It falls thor­ough­ly on this side of the great divide, but tells us noth­ing about what lies beyond. For all our expec­ta­tions of obscure and intim­i­dat­ing meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions, The Sev­enth Seal refus­es to spec­u­late or tell us any­thing we don’t or can’t know. Instead, it allows us only famil­iar things, the stuff of life, and then invites us to imag­ine an exis­tence with­out them on our own time.