The Seventh Seal

I saw The Seventh Seal today. It was perhaps Ingmar Bergman's first major movie, and you can tell. Not in the sense that it is an immature or flawed work, but by the theme. The movie is about the Godless universe, the pointlessness of life, the inevitability of death, and the overall stupidity of it all. Only a fresh young film director can decide he shall make a movie that will ask the most important questions ever. And the central premise of the movie is breathtaking in its theatricality - death confronts a knight back from the Crusades in medieval times, and tells him he has to die. The knight challenges death to a game of chess. If he wins, death has to let him go. The very idea: a medieval knight and death play chess for the knight's life. Yet, it does not appear absurd in the movie. In Bergman's words:

'It was a delicate and dangerous artistic move, which could have failed. Suddenly, an actor appears in the whiteface, dressed all in black, and announces that he is Death. Everyone accepted the dramatic feat that he was Death, instead of saying "Come on now, don't try to put something over on us! You can't fool us! We can see that you are just a talented actor who is painted white and clad in black! You're not Death at all!".'

But somehow it does not happen.

One of the best scenes in the movie is where the knight Antonius Block(played by Max von Sydow) visits an old(even by middle ages standards ;) ) church. He goes to confession and death masquerades as the priest(screenplay translation from Swedish, excerpt from here):

The KNIGHT is kneeling before a small altar. It is dark and quiet around him.
The air is cool and musty. Pictures of saints look down on him with stony
eyes. Christ's face is turned upwards, His mouth open as if in a cry of
anguish. On the ceiling beam there is a representation of a hideous devil
spying on a miserable human being. The KNIGHT hears a sound from the
confession booth and approaches it. The face of DEATH appears behind the
grille for an instant, but the KNIGHT doesn't see him.


KNIGHT
I want to talk to you as openly as I can, but my heart is empty.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT
The emptiness is a mirror turned towards my own face. I see myself in it, and I am filled with fear and disgust.

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT
Through my indifference to my fellow men, I have isolated myself from their company. Now I live in a world of phantoms. I am imprisoned in my dreams and fantasies.

DEATH
And yet you don't want to die.

KNIGHT
Yes, I do.

DEATH
What are you waiting for?

KNIGHT
I want knowledge.

DEATH
You want guarantees?

KNIGHT
Call it whatever you like. Is it so cruelly inconceivable to grasp God with the senses? Why should He hide himself in a mist of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?

DEATH doesn't answer.

KNIGHT
How can we have faith in those who believe when we can't have faith in ourselves? What is going to happen to those of us who want to believe but aren't able to? And what is to become of those who neither want to nor are capable of believing?

The KNIGHT stops and waits for a reply, but no one speaks or answers him. There is complete silence.

KNIGHT
Why can't I kill God within me? Why does He lives on in this painful and humiliating way even though I curse Him and want to tear Him out of my heart? Why, in spite of everything, is He a baffling reality that I can't shake off? Do you hear me?

DEATH
Yes, I hear you.

KNIGHT
I want knowledge, not faith, not suppositions, but knowledge. I want God to stretch out His hand towards me, reveal Himself and speak to me.

DEATH
But He remains silent.

KNIGHT
I call out to Him in the dark but no one seems to be there.

DEATH
Perhaps no one is there.

KNIGHT
Then life is an outrageous horror. No one can live in the face of death, knowing that all is nothingness.

DEATH
Most people never reflect about either death or the futility of life.

KNIGHT
But one day they will have to stand at that last moment of life and look towards the darkness.

DEATH
When that day comes ...

KNIGHT
In our fear, we make an image, and that image we call God.


Wow!

Quoting Larkin:

'And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.'

For me it was the latter.