Review: The Seventh Seal (1957)

“I have a performance.”

“Cancelled on account of death.”

“What about my contract?”

“Terminated!”

 “No loopholes? No exceptions?”

“……”

Life may treat you unequally, but Death will not! The movie gives me vibes of Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ as it covers a period of ‘black death’ pandemic of medieval ages.  It also feels like a great Shakespearean tragedy. Even the knight resembles Hamlet with his questions, doubts, nihilistic attitude, and a philosopher soul amidst the existential crisis. Not ‘Contagion’ but this movie, in my opinion, is more appropriate to experience right now.  

Time the movie covers was around the early middle ages. A disillusioned knight returns his land and castle from the crusades only to find his land infested by the Great Plague. He was with his cynical squire, also he was accompanied by his Death (personified) which was always with him (aren’t we all?). The knight challenges Death to play chess with him to bargain some time to get his unanswered questions about God’s existence. The game continues during the entire film. On the way, they met a jolly couple of actor husband, wife, and their little child. The knight feels life with Joseph and Mary, “I will remember this hour of peace… and I’ll hold this memory in my hands.”

They saw a thief stealing a bracelet from a dead plague-victim. He was the same theologist who persuaded the knight to join the crusades. Further, they saw a group of flagellants carrying heavy crosses and were whipping others and their selves for repentance. This scene is gloomy. But more bleakness they found when they met a girl, caged and about to burn alive at stake; she punished because she slept with the devil and this act of her caused the plague, or as her captors said. When the knight asked her about the devil, she said, “look in my eyes, the priest could see him there, and the soldiers too- they would not touch me.” When she had prepared for Death, the square said, “she sees nothing but emptiness.” 

Playing chess with Death, in my opinion, is a cinematic phenomenon that shows the futility of us mortals who try not to die with a full sense of awareness that we do one day, if not today. We die not because of illness but because we born, and whatever is between these two events is a game of chess played between Death and us; the more we are good at it, the more we survive. Our journey is always toward Death. It’s our choice whether we want to lead it the way of a group of flagellants or the way joseph and marry move with their wooden wagon cheerfully toward hope, optimism.

The movie begins and nearly ends with the words “And when the Lamb has opened the Seventh Seal, there was a silence in heaven about the space of half an hour” (Revelation 8:1). It suggests the “Silence of God.” It seems like God is silent since then.