The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal was released in 1958 by the great swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman. It is in a different language, it was released over fifty years ago. Does that lessen its impact today at all? Not at all. For The Seventh Seal embodies a mood, a time, and a specific idea. For, The Seventh Seal  is something like a period piece. It takes place in the middle ages, and just how the ideas Bergman shows existed in those times existed now, they still exist in 2011. It is a timeless classic. It begins with a knight played by Max Von Sydow (who acted in 2010's Shutter Island) who is tired and weary after the crusades. He has cheated death in the crusades, and he will attempt to cheat him again. Death comes for the knight, but the knight is intelligent and decides to postpone and perhaps even cheat death by playing him in a game of chess. Death is clever too and poses as different townspeople to learn what the knight's strategy will be. The entire film is not just about chess though, for in its gorgeously shot story we get many other colorful characters. The movie is about deviousness and the silence of god. God does not help these people and they are left to fight against pure evil. Their fate is merely the natural conclusion.