The Death of Cinema: The Seventh Seal (1957)
Cast: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Bengt Ekerot
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Country: Sweden
Genre: Drama | Fantasy
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Notes: The following article on Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal is a part of Joe Galm’s ongoing series entitled The Death Of Cinema, where he explores the ways mortality has been interpreted through the cinematic medium.
Nature proves a ubiquitous element from the opening of Ingmar Bergman’s Black Death-set The Seventh Seal, though somehow the simple power of such pervasive majesty is lost, as is often the case within our contemporary model, beneath the enormity of the manufactured – superstitious ritual and stilted imagery become the mallet and pitching tool with which the masses sculpt our reality. And Bergman knows this. Just as the geotic underpinnings of humanity can still be seen, however subtly, within the context of modern society – look no further than Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Blissfully Yours for a masterful cinematic conceptualization of this – Bergman realizes that cultural intervention can, in fact, mask the natural course of things. (The film’s sporadic bouts of barbarianism suggest how far we have yet to travel in terms of quelling our lurid roots.) Perhaps this is why The Seventh Seal is presented as, or rather, can be interpreted as a series of juxtapositions, contrasts of the natural and the unnatural, the dogmatic and the evocative, the living and the dead.
…Bergman’s seminal work is concerned less with meditating on the yet-to-comes of mortality and more with creating a sort of organic dialogue between antagonistic, oftentimes intangible, entities.
To be sure, Bergman’s seminal work is concerned less with meditating on the yet-to-comes of mortality and more with creating a sort of organic dialogue between antagonistic, oftentimes intangible, entities. The characters of The Seventh Seal pontificate verily on the spectrum of existence and nature of death, yes, but the film is more focused on how these viewpoints relate to individual circumstance than it is in examining their cogence; this difference is key. Rather than entrust characters with the position of being authorial mouthpieces (though one comes close), Bergman positions them as conditional beings, those whose belief systems are fraught with the specters of old. Whereas knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) seeks a kind of empirical divinity in order to validate a decade spent crusading, his squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand), adapts a more atheistic approach, having played witness to the senseless acts tethered to spiritual superiority. True, this pair does present us with a considerably slight model of both those who pine for meaning and those who are but deific defectors – Jöns ‘s grasp on morality, particularly his treatment of women, is stereotypically savage and apathetic – but Bergman seems conscious, comfortable even, with these generalizations insofar as he can play them for laughs. (I find The Seventh Seal is far more effective as comedy than drama.) The Swede makes it a point to systematically include not only these but also many other interpretations of the here and hereafter, droll depictions that allot levity to a situation we arbitrarily, not to mention universally, fasten solemnity to. “Why do you laugh – it’s serious,” asks the actor Jof (Nils Poppe) of Jöns as two other members of their party threaten each other over a femme fatale. This reaction, this defense of sobriety, is commonplace when-and-wherever death is topical. Bergman is merely acting the polemicist here, asking why we can’t have fun at the expense of our mortality, or for that matter, anything of reverent esteem.
The thematic relevance and brusque barbs of other characterizations aside, it’s the persona of Block that we’re to affix our attentions to, as his psyche is of most prevalent display throughout the work; his ingrained sense of metaphysical doubt is either a reflection of Bergman’s own, or a temperament with which the artist can empathize. Bergman would even later explore his own wavering relationship with mysticism in a 1960’s triad of films labeled “The Faith Trilogy,” (the likes of which may someday be examined within this series) though there with far more stoic strokes. Here, in a flourish of now-iconic anthropomorphization, Bergman puts a face to death, actualizing this intangible within the physical realm and, moreover, accessorizing it with a chess set. Dressed with monochromatic garb and a wry grin, Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears intermittently throughout the narrative to play chess with Block – their exchanges pantomime our innate urge for survival. This is the quintessence of Bergman’s film, at least in way of its Absurdist bent: Humanity is, in an oblique fashion, playing a zero-sum game with Death, a game that, future innovation notwithstanding, it cannot win. Keeping with this, the crux of the interpretation is that we’re given control to position ourselves (socioeconomically, physically, spiritually) against the advances of that grand abyss in any manner we deem fit; we just have to acknowledge that the end result will not change. Inspired then is how Bergman employs this notion of personal arrangement to show how death, while ultimately indiscriminate, can be accounted for – and be thusly avoided – in terms of environmental proximity. In the case of The Seventh Seal, the plague that the characters so vocally fear and steadfastly avoid only accounts for one onscreen fatality; that human action is shown to be responsible for far more instances of suffering is as telling as it is disquieting.
The film’s overarching comedic tenor stems from the fact that opinions can form so variably about topics as inclusive as existence and elusive as divinity.
Despite one’s best efforts, however, demise is part of nature, and it’s this concession that brings Bergman’s aforementioned floral and faunal emphases to light: Death may be shown as a person, but its presence is something that seamlessly permeates the very folds of existence. It surrounds us. It guides our decisions. It is not something to be understood through our meager, mortal means, especially not with the kind of conviction that’s become a social norm. (Jöns even asks, “Do they really expect modern people to believe such drivel,” after an oracular speech forecasts an Old-Testament style apocalypse.) In this, the personification of Death in The Seventh Seal is, in spite of its diffuse relatability and favorance, actually a backhanded allegory, a riposte to the assertiveness with which others interpret the beyond. Bergman is braiding the attitudes of devil’s advocate and outright agnostic here, though at least he’s sensitive enough to openly prod his own confusions and uncertainties. His Death, however, has no secrets, and even admits as much upon Block’s imploration. The issue then becomes not what will happen to the characters – and by way of extrapolation, we the viewers – post-mortem, but how, with their inexhaustible capacity for cognizing worlds, they can cope with finality and nothingness. Was all the time they spent piously preparing for their fate done so in vain – would that be a purer tragedy than death itself?
As per the director’s proclivity, different branches of the arts (painting, theatre, song, sculpture) are featured prominently throughout the work, as Bergman tries to contextualize the relationship between evocation and reality in regard to dissolution. Early on in the knight and squire’s travels, they encounter a painter (Gunnar Olsson) who devotes murals to the subject of death. With the intent of reminding people of their mortality, he states his own interpretation of this ultimate transition as something of a sacrificial rite, a beauteous and collective forfeiture of our privileged time here. Then, motioning to another tableau, one of utterly morose constitution, he explains, “That horrible thing is what people actually believe.” Bergman does not claim to have all the answers concerning life and any theorized extensions thereof, but with The Seventh Seal, he’s at least willing to anecdotally comment on the behavior he sees in others concerning the subject. Granted, he’s not willing to meet every grade of belief on its individual terms, but that criticism of the work is relatively benign, maybe even moot. The film’s overarching comedic tenor stems from the fact that opinions can form so variably about topics as inclusive as existence and elusive as divinity. To both Bergman and his protagonist Block, life and death are absolute in both certainty and enigma. But through this mystery emerges art, if only to put a face to these beautiful, frustrating absolutes. There’s something triumphantly cathartic in that.
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