The Seventh Seal
Most movies set in medieval days involve saturated colors, enormous amounts of swordfighting, and maybe a black plague thrown in for dramatic tension. The Seventh Seal tackles the same era - with the same plague fears - from a completely different angle.
Released in 1957 by famed director Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal is a Swedish-language film which is set in Sweden. Fantastic actor Max von Sydow plays Antonius Block, a weary knight who has been away fighting in the Crusades for ten long years. He is finally returning with his grumpy but obedient-enough squire, Jons. All the two want to do is go home. Unfortunately for Antonius, the very moment his foot steps on his home soil, Death arrives in the guise of a tall, pale man in a black cloak. If you've seen Monty Python or Bill & Ted, you've seen parodies of this. Death wants to take Antonius away, but Antonius counters with an idea. If Antonius can beat Death in chess, Antonius gets to go free. Death, intrigued, agrees.
What follows is Antonius and Jons working their way across a rural landscape, encountering various people, as the chess game progresses. We learn just why Antonius is trying to delay his sentence via this game and how much the ravages of war have impacted him. There are a variety of shades of grey in the characters we encounter. One man is happy to run off with another man's wife. She goes merrily - but her tune changes when she's caught and blames it all on the guy. Characters are beaten up for little reason. And all around them the plague is coming. They don't know why, and some feel it's God's punishment on them. Others merely want to survive. People are accused of being witches. But some manage to hold out hope.
For those who thrive on intense battle scenes, it's important to point out that this isn't that kind of movie. It's black and white and it's more about thoughtful conversation than hacking someone's head off. That's not to say it's monotone. Characters absolutely feel with great passion. The cuckolded husband rages with passion and grief. The mother dreams of a better life for her child. Each character has his or her own view on life, death, and what makes it all worthwhile.
From a medieval point of view, it's an interesting view into the various mindsets that could have existed when something as potent and inexplicable as the Black Plague descends onto a landscape. But beyond that, I'd be gentle with expecting authenticity. The outfits are more like costumes for a play. The places they go are similarly often more like play stages than authentic locations. The timing of various events here with real life events doesn't match up. Things seen here didn't exist in Sweden at the time. So this film was never meant to recreate medieval times. It was more that the backdrop of the black plague helped provide an atmosphere to address common fears and worries we all have about life in general.
Still, that's more an alert for medieval fans than to say the movie suffers as a result. It is more a fantasy film, set in "olden times", as a way to help us explore a variety of universal human concerns and issues.
Highly recommended.
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