First article: Sea Urchin Says
The epidemic has been going on for a year and a half since last winter, and it seems that there is no escape from China. People go from fear to numbness and finally coexist with it, and then still remember the powerlessness and dimness in their comfort. After coming out of this great plague, watching Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" has more feelings than two years ago.
Black and white has always had a special appeal to me, it can better present the light and shade of things and the changes in light and shadow, and it also helps the characters' emotional bursts and adds to the mystery of the scene. Bergman's film can be said to be no fun. It can be said that it is even a little boring and depressing, but the film itself is not a product of entertainment, but an enlightenment of thought and speculation. What "The Seventh Seal" gives is long-term contemplation and shock.
The name of the "Seventh Seal" comes from the "Bible, New Testament, Revelation". Saint John received a parchment scroll from God with seven seals. Only the Lamb (Jesus) is worthy to open the seventh seal. Every time a seal is opened, there will be a kind of miracle in the world. When the seven seals are opened, the angels will sound the seven trumpets, and the judgment day will come. The opening of the "Seventh Seal" actually means the beginning of the great judgment, and the conclusion of life and death of good and evil will be drawn.
This passage from the Book of Revelation is quoted at the beginning of the film,
"When the Lamb lifted the seventh seal, heaven was dead silent, and this dead silence lasted for half an hour", which was called "The silence of God".
The film is set in fourteenth-century Europe, a time of destruction and darkness. The knight Block returned to the European continent from the Crusades. He encountered the god of death and fought against it. He saw the Black Death raging, the torture of religious rituals and political persecution, and people were shrouded in the fear of death, while Different people have different ways of coping with death.
And in reality, however, the film somehow creates a "fake history", the Crusades were in the 13th century, the Black Death was in the 14th century, and all of these events took place in different historical periods . Bergman uses this fusion and reorganization of historical events to create a more realistic historical environment, showing and exploring the depravity, evil, fear, belief, asceticism, religion, truth, and liberation of mankind throughout the Middle Ages in a specific time and space.
Bergman said, "The Seventh Seal is a metaphor, from the subject matter to the plot, which is linked to contemporary reality and future threats. People in the Middle Ages lived in fear caused by the epidemic of plague. Today, People are still living in fear."
This is a philosophical film that explores "faith" and "existentialism".
In this film, Death is personified, which shows the creativity of the director, making people really see and feel the existence of death. It explores serious questions about existence and religion—the silence of God, whether God really exists, whether he can actually save people from sickness.
Why do people have faith? Why do people believe in God and their lives are still not saved? Why Does Suffering Shake People's Faith in God?
Block says faith is painful, it's like "falling in love with someone who is standing in the dark and never seeing his face".
Death is portrayed in the film as a real person, figuratively personified as a pale, black-robed monk. There was fear all over him and everywhere he went, suddenly coming at a certain moment and taking people's lives without explanation. He is nowhere to be found but everywhere.
Medieval and modern characters coexist
Block is very confident in his chess skills, so with the classic scene of him and Death playing chess at the beach, he wants to delay the arrival of death by playing against the god of death, which reflects his knighthood ideal and fighting spirit.
Bergman said the scene was inspired by an Albertus Pictor painting of a medieval church from the 1580s.
Block, despite his superb chess skills, initially won by tricking Reaper. He thought he could control his own destiny because he had a chance to fight against death, but when death did come, no one could escape.
As a Christian, Block, as a young man, followed the crusades that the Pope waged to recapture the Holy Land of Jerusalem from the Muslims. The knight in the film has always been a tormented thinker, trying to figure out the meaning of life and asking Death himself where he goes after he dies. As a jihadist, he doubted the meaning and consequences of the crusades, he went to confession to a priest disguised by death and revealed his tricks to win at chess. This somehow hints that death has infiltrated the religious system, and he sees Block's weakness.
Death is at the center of the film, and a lot of the plot revolves around death. The beginning of their game is also the beginning of the story when Reaper first appears in front of Block. The game between Block and Reaper isn't just about chess, it's about life and death. Block questioned the meaning of life and wanted to do something meaningful before being taken away by death. As he faces death, time is stretched infinitely, and Block sees a lot of people, trying to find the meaning of life. At first, only Block and Jon can see Death, but over time, until the end, the other characters can also see Death.
The church painter told the knight's entourage about the three paintings of "Dance of Death", "Plague Symptoms" and "Mass Flogging". These scenes all appeared one by one in the back, and a dark picture of Europe in the Middle Ages unfolded in turn.
As the parade walks away, Bergman uses an overlay of three shots.
Shot 1, the parade marches from the lower left corner of the screen to the upper right corner;
Shot 2, the team gradually left this sinful place;
Shot 3, on the ground the team passed by, grass grew sparsely.
It was Shot 3 that offered hope, and that was the sowing of the gospel, the parable of the sower in Luke's Gospel: there is still a chance for mankind to repent before the end of the day.
2.
"The Revelation of the Middle Ages to the Present World" - Faith in the last days is the reason and the way back
Death "leads" Block to rediscover his belief in God and the meaning of life. When faced with death, he thirsted for knowledge, sought truth, and found it all in vain. Then he turned to his belief in God, and it is not difficult to see the despair of medieval people and the conflict between religion and science from the knight. When he confessed to the priest, Block said, is it so cruel and inconceivable to understand God with the senses? Why would he hide himself in a fog of half-spoken promises and unseen miracles?” he hoped God appeared in this world and used his power to prove the existence of God.
As Block ate strawberries with the actor's family, he said: "Faith is torture - you know what? It's like loving someone, he's in the dark, but no matter how loud you scream, he won't show up ." When Death approached Block, Block desperately tried to seize God and his own life, but God kept hiding himself and kept silent. He doubted the existence of God because if God could see their suffering, why didn't God help them, and with the Black Death taking so many lives, people also tried to seek comfort from God. Jon also saves a maid from being raped by a theologian. The barbarism and evil of the theologian further embodies the corruption of the religious system, illustrating the near-fragmentation of religion at that time.
A family of circus performers is a very special existence in such a "doomsday". Judging from the names of these characters, Joseph, they all have religious archetypes. When Joseph woke up in the morning, he saw Mary and Jesus. In such an era full of fear, they still maintained simplicity, kindness, and pure faith in God. The knights also saw all the beauty and happiness in the world in them. When the knight was drinking milk, he held the basin, his eyes glowed, and it was as holy as drinking holy water. This worldly anesthesia and the comfort of life made him temporarily forget the pain. When Block tries to do something meaningful in his rivalry with Reaper, he ends up helping the couple escape Reaper.
And Bergman threw a question to the audience here. Death is everywhere, and people have nowhere to escape. Why did the circus family simply escape? They are actually the human representatives left in the last days. Their sincerity, purity, kindness, love, and tolerance, their forbearance and obedience even in the midst of suffering, and their devotion to God are all other arrangements that seem to happen by accident.
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