Thursday, December 31, 2009

Classic Review: The Seventh Seal (10/10)


           Ingmar Bergman gave us an incredible film here.   A knight goes wit to wit against death in a game of chess to buy himself more life.  The movie takes a very philosophic bend, and takes us through the thoughts that every human has thought since nigh on the beginning of mankind.  Is there a God?  Why can I not perceive him with any of my senses?  Yet, why can I not rid myself of the thought of God?  No point in this film can be looked at with a glance; every scene is a deep well of meaning, and every character meant to show us a different way humanity deals with the inevitability of death.  There isn’t a moment to miss.         
               
Set in medieval Europe, we are confronted with a world obsessed with the end.  Religion is at its peak of making noise; the plague travels the land and leaves nothing but death, boils, and terror.  Amid this horror, a knight returns from the crusades convinced that the ten years he spent there at war were worthless, and left with no faith in God.  Death comes knocking, but the knight cleverly challenges him to the ultimate game of wits, chess, since he had heard in ballads in tales that Death plays.  During a reprieve in the game, Death gives the knight a chance to do one last deed on earth to search for meaning. 
               
During this search for meaning, the good knight meets many people, sees the death the plague has caused, and we are generally given an intense view of how people handle life.  From love of family, to lust for the opposite sex, to an empty marriage, to a thief just trying to keep his mouth filled with bread and beer.  All the time Death is looming over him and everyone he meets, with all their lives hinging on that chess game.  We see the knight revel in his contest with the ultimate opponent, and we see him despair when there are no alternatives left.  We see a witch who wishes she could see the devil so badly that she potently imagines him, and is in fact disappointed when the knight cannot also see the devil in her. 
               
                There’s more than enough examining I could do of this film.  Every scene is worth examining, there’s no doubt about that.  But the main thing to take away is that the movie shows the sadness and absurdity of life, and the different ways humans deal with it.  We are shown lust, love, comedy, despair, and reason.  In the end, all of these techniques fail and everyone dies. There’s no escape from it.  So what is there to do?  We need look no further than the one set of people that survive.  The happy family with a child.  They’ve escaped the horrors of both life and death, jealousy and lust.  So, rather than sink into despair over our inescapable demise, the movie shows that happiness can be found amongst ourselves, and that other people are where we can find joy.  And in the end, there’s nothing wrong with joy. 


                The film is shot brilliantly.  The characters are always framed to show off exactly the way they’re supposed to feel to us, looked down upon or looked up at. The technology is very limiting in most aspects of film making we think of, even when compared to other old classics this movie feels a bit more primitive.  However, it’s never distracting from what we’re being presented with, and even gives it a more respectable feel, as though the film were coming straight from the Middle Ages that are being shown to us.  The sound track is a little bit distracting at times, as it tries to give an intense pacing that the film doesn’t really allow for.  Still though, none of this detracts at all from the quality of the writing that so brilliantly displays the human condition to us, which is exactly the goal of this film and it accomplishes it perfectly.

                I feel a bit bad giving out two perfect scores when I’ve only written 3 reviews thusfar, but what really lies at fault here is that I decided to see good movies. There’s nothing else to do with Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece than to give it a perfect score.  The lack of technology cannot take any points away from it, and the story is both gripping, entertaining, and more meaningful than I care to talk about at any more length.  This is a movie you must see, take an hour and a half to sit and consider your own life, because as Socrates said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and this movie forces you to consider your life and how you handle its end.  Even the simple painter in the film knew this was important, and you would be completely remiss in not seeing this complete 10/10 classic. 




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