Seventh seal

Ingram Bergman, the legendary Swedish director, made an iconic movie SeventhSeal. The director explores the human condition in the backdrop of most horrific time in the medieval ages; the smell of death everywhere with Plague; poverty and blind belief in God adds further weight to those tragic times.

The protagonist who is a Knight, weary of spending ten years in the Crusades, could not get rid of his scepticism about God. He thinks that he has wasted a decade of his prime on an unproven thing. He is shadowed by ‘Death’ asking him to come along as his time is up.  Undisturbed by him, knight invites death to play a game of chess hoping ‘Death’ will give him a clue about God. Director uses the interplay between the Death and the knight with the chess game on the seashore with darkening clouds at twilight time. They combat out on the ideas on God and the devil.   He uses the scenes of Witch who was burnt at stake and self-flagellation by the villagers to intensify the darkness of human life. Scenes of Primal criminalisation of man as a sinner by the church and inhumanity of the monk, in the name of Christ and bible asking the villagers in rags to repent, are shocking in revealing the psychological blow it had on men in disempowering humanity.

The protagonist Knight is accompanied by another middle-aged returning crusader Knight. The companion squire of the Knight is convinced of the hypocrisy of the god business, takes each day on its turn. These knights are surrounded by the ordinary people, a gipsy, a blacksmith, the divinity student turned thief who steals from the dying from the plague, while waiting for the knight’s wife. All are affected by egos, pettiness, necessities and ordinary longing under the strong shadow of impending death.

The clown, a refreshing character, has a young wife and a beautiful child. He has a special gift of seeing the apparitions of Mother Mary with a crown walking infant Jesus in the garden. He could see Death playing chess with the Knight. He could visualise, what he himself has to do; and separates out to chart his own way.

The clown, his wife and the adorable infant, in the director’s view, represents hope and future in the midst of darkness.

As there are so many canvasses one behind the other that you cannot remain unaffected by the movie. there can’t be a better depiction of medieval Europe than this movie.