The Seventh Seal 1957 4K SWEDISH Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

In the middle of the 14th century, the knight Antonius Blok and his squire return after ten years of crusades to their native Sweden. Blok is tired of life, and does not see anything around him, for the sake of which it would be worth continuing to drag out his existence. But first he wants to make sure that God is ...

Review 4K Movie

Many films were shot as interpretations of the Bible: "The 10 Commandments of the Devil", "The Gospel of Matthew", "The Last Temptation of Christ", etc. In all of them, the main theme is the Bible, the life of Jesus, etc. The Seventh Seal is no exception.

This film is based on the revelation of John the Evangelist about the Apocalypse, the interpretation of which is given to us by Bergman. It is with the words from the Bible that Bergman opens and closes his picture. Thus, telling us that the end of the world has come. And death is a vivid representative of this end.

And the whole film is nothing more than a struggle against this end. And this struggle with the end looks like a game of chess, a game with oblivion, with death itself. And what, in essence, is Death?

1) Message, punishment of God. The first shots, where death, like a kite, descends to Earth, is confirmation of this.
2) Death is darkness.

When we first find ourselves in the dark, not having time to get used to it, we do not know what to do, we do not understand what is happening, what is happening, we are in a kind of oblivion. In the film, this darkness is shown not only by the death costume, which is completely black, but also by the moment at the beginning when death comes to take the knight. Throwing off his cloak, God's punishment for a second plunges us into Darkness.
And only with the words of Antonius Blok, the darkness disappears. From this, it can be assumed that death is darkness, i.e. unknown.

A knight fights against Death, who in this film personifies not only all people before the end, but also light, the opposing force of darkness.

Its second meaning does not appear immediately, but only after meeting with wandering actors. But more on that later.
First, about the fight.

As I wrote above, the struggle between death and man is expressed in the game of chess. Throughout the film, the knight plays with death three times. The first time was at the very beginning, in the film exposition. The frame is structured like this: the left side, the side of Death, is darkened, and the right side, the side of the knight, is lit. in the middle, in front of them, is a chessboard. In two compositions out of three above the chessboard there is the rate of the game, that for which the characters are fighting.

In the first composition, the stake is emptiness, something that the characters are not interested in. Well, why do they need sky and water? For nothing and because the game starts with the rate unknown.

On the way to the second track, the rate appears. It becomes a troupe of actors, which travels with the knight to his castle.

As you can see in the second composition, the knight, the representative of light and valor, is in the lighted, bright half. Death is the representative of the end, in the darkened, black side. And above their game is the family, which has become the goal of the game, the rivalry of two forces.

And the end of all this struggle is shown in the third composition, in which the knight loses. Not out of stupidity, but out of love. Seeing the love and care of other people, he realized what good is. That is why he decided to give up in order to save his family.
His defeat is shown not only by the fact that he was checkmated, but also by the fact that he turned black like Death.

The end for the knight and his companions is shown in the same way as the struggle - in the form of chess. Death, like a queen, a queen, came to take the pawns. Having seen their end, they confess to us before death, in a sense. As, probably, we will all be when the day of judgment comes or when Death comes for us.

And it would seem that nowhere is there salvation from death, it is found everywhere: both in the form of a murdered wanderer, and even in the guise of a priest with whom Blok is talking, I explain why he decided to postpone death.

But there is a way out of the power of death. It is the love that gives us a bright ending, just like the family of itinerant actors at the end of the film.

This film not only fully shows what cinema is capable of, but also reveals the theme of the end, the theme of death, which will touch us or the wound later. Bergman put a lot of effort into telling us this: in the image, and in the word, and in the action - in everything.

Let's hope that today's viewer, who, unfortunately, watches mostly "American Pie" and "Dormitory Trouble", will hear the author of this unforgettable film.