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DIRECTED BY: Ingmar Bergman
FEATURING: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Björnstrand, Nils Poppe, Bengt Ekerot, Bibi Andersson
PLOT: A disillusioned knight and his cynical squire return from the Crusades to a 14th century Sweden ravaged by the Black Plague; Death comes for the knight, but he convinces the Reaper to play a game of chess for his soul.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The Seventh Seal is undoubtedly a great movie, but its weirdness is in doubt. In fact, trying to decide if this film is strange enough to make it on the List almost makes me feel like Antonius Block wondering if there’s a God out there. As an existential allegory, the film has a significant amount of unreality in its corner; although much of the movie is a starkly realistic portrait of medieval life, Bergman often ignores logic in minor ways when necessary to make his larger metaphorical points. He also incorporates the fantastic in one major way, by making Death a literal character in the film, a “living, breathing” character who not only plays chess but also poses as a priest and chops down a tree with his scythe. That’s not much weirdness to go on, though, and the best external support I can find for considering the movie “weird” is the fact that it’s been (inaccurately) tagged with “surrealism” on IMDB. I’m torn; the weird movie community will need to chime in on this one.
COMMENTS: The Seventh Seal has a big, imposing reputation as a masterpiece of world cinema, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you may be surprised to find that most of what you think you know about it is wrong. In the first place, it’s not nearly as gloomy as you may have heard. True, every frame of the film is suffused with the foreknowledge of death—Bergman is very in-your-face with his message that you are going to die, and it’s going to be horrible—but the grim scenes alternate with lighthearted, comic ones. The entire dynamic between the drunken smith Plog, and his unfaithful wife Maria, and her unlucky paramour Scat, for example, has a tone of bawdy Shakespearean comedy. The idyllic scenes where the knight enjoys a meal of milk and wild strawberries with the juggler Jof and his family have a warmth that temporarily drives away the chill—even though there is a skull peering over the Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957)