The Seventh Seal. March 30, 2020


It had been a while since I last saw a Bergman movie – I think I was 15, which was definitely too early. Still, I could remember so many individual scenes from this movie: the performance from the group of actors, the picnic, the chess game (naturally), the guy dying from the plague, the last supper, and the dance of death. In fact I think this movie has always been in the back of my head whenever I think of life in the Middle Ages, even though it’s clearly not very historically accurate at all.

I find it impressive how smoothly the movie changes tone between the bleakness of life in this ear – and the silence of God in face of it – and the lightness with which people seem to take it, still trying to make a decent living out of it all. Some of the monologues felt a little strange, but maybe that’s just me being unable to take Swedish seriously.