KHI October Movie of the Month: The Seventh Seal (1957)

[wu tang goku]

If you do not know who Ingmar Bergman is, I almost regret to inform you that you are a film retard. Wikipedia his ass.That aside, this month's film is....


aka "Det Sjunde Inseglet"

This film is awesome. This film is awesome because it is a story with a metaphor we all know, but at the same time newcomers will find something unexpected, and it tackles all the big questions along the way. The way it approaches these questions is rather blunt and straight-up, and leaves no clear answers. Most of the film's strength comes from how direct it is. Bergman often posed his own questions of mortality and morality, pondered, and plugged them into his films; he is the most personal of all great directors.


I like long walks on the beach, too... *blush* <33

Antonius Block, played by Max von Sydow, is a knight returning home from the Crusades with his squire, Jons (Gunnar Bjornstrand, an awesome name), and has an encounter with a personified Death (Bengt Ekerot) on the beach pictured above. They exchange this dialogue:

Antonius Block: Who are you?
Death: I am Death.
Antonius Block: Have you come for me?
Death: I have long walked by your side.
Antonius Block: So I have noticed.
Death: Are you ready?
Antonius Block: My body is ready, but I am not.

Yes, Antonius is not ready, for he desires some sort of affirmation that God will be there on the other side, and engages Death in a game of chess. This gesture, of course, prolongs the inevitable, but Antonius knows this and only hopes to live on borrowed time long enough to find the answers he seeks. The game continues through the entire film, in various points. Death is very preoccupied, you see, with the Black Plague, so he must leave and revisit.


Bengt Ekerot (Death), playing chess with the Knight (Max von Sydow), right.

The rest will have to be seen by you, viewers. This is not a film that knows the answers to the questions it asks, nor does is pose like it does. This isn't about knowing these answers. What this film is about is that we can't ever truly find answers to these questions any other way than through Death. At this point, Block's evasion of Death becomes humorous.

Faith does not give Block solace; believing in God does not make Him true, and this tortures Block the most.

One more thing you may notice is the use of landscape, and this is where Black and White really makes it effective. The landscape is not used very much, other than for traveling shots. The beach, the mountainside, plateaus, etc. This achieves a bleakness, an absence of substance that only leads to suspicion of wasteland and emptiness. Thus Bergman gives us a scary world, like purgatory.

The last thing we are left with is this image:


Dirty dancing the dance of death.

This, I think, is the most poignant (and downright coolest) moment. I will quote my fellow critic and good friend on this one:

"And then there’s the film’s haunting final image, the dark figures of Death and his six victims dancing off into the distance. If Bergman had withheld any certainty before, he now finally suggests with this enigmatic conclusion a single possibility: Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong questions all along."

Trailer:



Archived movie of the months:

September '09 - Breathless

[Massive Attack]

i've seen the image of the character playing chess with Death a few times on the internet, but i haven't the film yet. my dad suggested we watch it once, but i think i went upstairs to be a useless piece of shit and play video games.

so i'll watch it now.

link for lazy homs: http://movie25.com/the-seventh-seal_394.html
has chinese subtitles or something if you're picky.

[wu tang goku]

lol i found that too

it is also on youtube minus asian subs: YouTube - The Seventh Seal (1957) 1/9

[Massive Attack]

goddamn buffering. i have to pause shit every few minutes and do other stuff for a bit.

[Square Ninja]

awesome movie is awesome

greatest squire ever

also: i was going to link to this comic about it but evidently the site is down

[Massive Attack]

that was DEEP. especially liked the travelling religious nuts who lashed each other and the ending scene.

[wu tang goku]

bump

[Massive Attack]

keep thinking of this film. the aesthetics of it are really effective.

[wu tang goku]

i try to pick films that stay with you for a while, and this is one of them. breathless was one too.

it expresses questions we all have even if we havent asked them and its satisfying

yes this was just an elaborate bump

[Square Ninja]

you and your shameless bumps have you no class

[wu tang goku]

i know man i feel bad