The Seventh Seal 1957 4K SWEDISH

The film is set in the 14th century in medieval Sweden. Knight Antonius Blok and his squire Jones return to their homeland from the crusade after ten years of absence from their homeland. On the deserted shore, Death appears to the Knight in the guise of a man in black, the Knight, tormented by doubts about the existence of God and the Devil, invites Death to play a Game with him - a game of chess ...

Of course, death surrounds all the events of the film. But ... still not only about her. The main theme is the relationship with religion and the church. The paradox is that relations with religion are simpler - they were expressed by its protagonist: No matter what I do, God does not leave me! But anticlericalism rushes from all cracks: good Christians resemble the soldiers of Tsar Herod, monks, and in general, the procession against the plague is akin to a pagan mystery. And Bergman does not particularly regret caustic paints, but he does not focus on this either.

Because the role of prophets is taken on by street musicians and artists. But not only - Bergman gives his heroes three versions of non-church humanism: the first, revealed by a knight, tries to defeat death with the mind of a philosopher in a game of minds (chess), the second with the mind of a cynical pragmatist, but at the same time a humanist-existentialist, tries to resist human evil by force and alienation of evil the universal plague. Finally, the third - by the power of love, medieval Joseph and Mary survive without losing God, and they themselves and their child.

It should be borne in mind, however, that, perhaps, the knight is an alter-ego of Bergman himself: a theomachist in the sense of preserving a person in the face of the god-death, even if you lose to him.

Naturally, Bergman has a wild number of followers - both in the subject and in the images. True, most of them tend to simplify, rather. So, in spite of the conventional asceticism of artistic means (this is still the 1950s and 1960s, and there are no special effects and battle scenes here), it is better to turn to the original source. After all, there are not enough films that turn us to clarify our relationship with God, even if he does not exist ...