Life During Wartime #8: THE SEVENTH SEAL (Patreon exclusive)

by Walter Chaw

The Seventh Seal (1957)
U.S.: Criterion, Kanopy, FuboTV, Watch TCM
Canada: Criterion

I showed my wife Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal for the first time in 2003, when we were pregnant with my daughter. As we were watching, we both, separately, decided to name our baby after the Bibi Andersson character, Mia, because Mia in the film is surrounded by loved ones, free from worry, happy, and protected from the death and despair that surrounds her. As a joke, I tell people that our daughter was named after a character in The Seventh Seal: “My daughter’s name is Antonius Block.” It’s not that funny, especially if you’re not one of a handful of people who know this film well enough to remember the name of the knight played by an impossibly young and lithe Max Von Sydow. Alas, such is my sense of humour.

Watching it as part of our little “family film school” marks the first time Mia has seen it and her namesake–a special moment for her parents, made bittersweet by the recent death of Von Sydow. As part of my introduction to The Seventh Seal, I told them about the “Milton Bogey.” What that is, is this thing a graduate advisor once told me about John Milton and how people develop in their head this idea that Milton is boring, stuffy, and antiquated, and so avoid reading him. The “Milton Bogey.” Ingmar Bergman, still the pre-eminent Swedish filmmaker and one of the great artists of the medium, has, I believe, developed his own “bogey” over the years. When I mentioned my love for Bergman in classrooms or discussions, I overwhelmingly got the impression that the perception of his films was that they were boring, impenetrable, foreign.

There aren’t a lot of filmmakers, after all, who inspired an SCTV parody, which focused on Bergman’s alleged pretensions. It’s funny, sure, but it’s simultaneously painful, because I find that judgment to be unfair, worsened by the fact that it’s the only exposure many would have had to Bergman at the time.

Criterion recently put out a massive Blu-ray boxed set of 39 Bergman films. It’s gorgeous. And I have hopes that my kids will want to dig into the totality of Bergman’s career as a result of a few guided screenings like this one.

After setting the table for the film as one that has been unfairly treated as dry and pretentious, I asked that they watch for contrary examples of this as they watched: that is, to note when the film is funny, or bawdy, or low–and focus, in particular, on Gunnar Björnstrand’s character The Squire. Additionally, I asked that they pay attention to the different modes of communication used in the picture and how drama and the prophetic visions of Nils Poppe’s Josef, especially, function as an antecedent to film.

• Tell me about the style of The Seventh Seal in terms like “abstract” or “symbolic” or “minimalistic.” Why did Bergman choose to tell this story the way he did?
• What’s this film about?

Set during the Black Plague, The Seventh Seal is a notably on-point film for this period in our history. It concerns a knight, Von Sydow’s Block, coming home from the Crusades and being confronted by Death (Bengt Ekerot) on the beach.

Block doesn’t seem surprised to see Death. Why not?

Not only is The Seventh Seal set during the Plague and a period of mass deaths, but Block has just returned from fighting in a bloody, religiously-driven war. If you’re interested in teaching about The Crusades, there are, of course, countless resources for such a thing. Khan Academy offers an 8-minute intro that covers the story in précis. My kids were already familiar with the basics, so we didn’t go into depth. Possibly all that needs to be said is that Block has been part of an unjust war, and he’s seen some shit.

Block challenges Death to a game of chess. He knows he can’t win, but he plays it to buy himself some time, time during which he takes a survey of the village, including making a confession, stopping by a pub, and hearing the confession of a witch about to be burned at the stake. Block meets a troupe of travelling performers centred around a married couple, Josef and Mia, and their toddler. My kids were amused by how the baby was often walking around without pants. I said that putting pants on babies is a lot like putting pants on dogs. I mean, really, what’s the point? I then told them that we also did not use diapers with them and just taught them to go in the yard. Such is my sense of humour. Block’s odyssey eventually takes him back to his castle, where his wife is waiting for him. Their reunion isn’t warm, exactly, but it does make me cry a little bit.

It doesn’t make me cry as much as a scene where Block has a picnic with Josef and Mia in a field–a frugal repast of fresh milk and, yes, wild strawberries. Block says, looking at the bowl from which they’re sharing milk, that he will hold the memory of that day like his hands holding that bowl of milk. Yep, there I go again.

• What is the significance of the chess game? Why does Block want to play?
• What does he want to see and do in the time he has remaining?
• What film have we watched recently that deals with end-of-life heroism? (It’s Joe Versus the Volcano.)
• How does what Block is doing compare with what Joe is doing?
• At the end of the chess game, what has Block accomplished?

• What does this film have to say about the idea of gratefulness?
• What does this film have to say about the idea of temporariness?

Checking in with the kids after the film, I asked them what they noticed in regards to the “bawdiness” of The Seventh Seal, and they both zeroed in on The Squire, Jons, who is irreverent and impish throughout. He sticks his tongue out at his boss behind his back, makes terrible jokes, saves a girl from rape but then demands sexual favours from her as thanks. He’s played for laughs and as a balance to the holy, almost ethereal, Block.

• Why is The Squire essential for The Seventh Seal to work?
• Can you think of other examples from other works you’ve experienced of a character who functions the way The Squire functions? That is to say, as comic relief, tension-breaker, and commentary on the protagonist and his journey?

Identifying characters that serve primarily as contextualizers of the hero’s story should eventually lead back to Red in The Shawshank Redemption–albeit with the added racial complexity of a black man whose purpose is mainly to serve the story of the white man. That film and Million Dollar Baby, which bookend the peak of Morgan Freeman’s popularity, are both problematic in that same way. Not even mentioning the atrocious Driving Miss Daisy.

• What are your thoughts on Josef’s final vision of Death dancing with his newest “collections” along the ridge?
• What are your thoughts on the “Bergman Bogey”?
• What are other things about which you’d had a preconceived notion that turned out to be different from what you expected?
• What are notions that your friends carry or that you’ve heard mentioned that you know are wrong, and how do you address them?

The Seventh Seal has always been a strong introduction to Bergman in my mind because, despite dealing with huge existential issues, it’s very accessible. Just the ‘smith’s wife’ subplot is awesomely earthy–and who couldn’t love the image of Death sawing through a tree in which someone’s perched? From here, I’m thinking the next Bergman will be Wild Strawberries and then, when the kids are gnarled veterans, Persona.

The kids loved The Seventh Seal, though for my son it might have been at least equally a sense of relief. The less adventurous and experienced moviegoer of the two, he was, I think, afraid this one would be quite boring for him and inscrutable to boot. That the film is neither of those things–and actually quite short at 96 minutes–was a positive development. Their primary focus, which came as a surprise to me, was the look of the film. They mentioned how beautiful the black-and-white cinematography was, and it inspired a conversation about how black-and-white was never, you know, black-and-white. They asked to see the opening sequence with the black beach and the ocean a second time. I cued up the picnic scene for them again, too, and asked them why they thought that scene made their dad cry so much–and so consistently. Their answer touched me: “Well, because you love us and the movie is reminding us to not take the good moments for granted.” This in itself made me cry.

We take a left turn–but not as sharp a one as you’d think–into Leo McCarey’s great Duck Soup next. It’ll be the kids’ introduction to the Marx Brothers and, although they won’t know it immediately, to McCarey as well. It’ll all come together, McCarey and Charles Laughton, with The Ruggles of Red Gap, and then McCarey and Cary Grant (with whom they are familiar through North by Northwest) with The Awful Truth.