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‘The Seventh Seal’ (1957) : The Problem of Evil or ‘‘God is Dead’’.
God is Dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. And we — we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.
(Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III)
I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have only just watched ‘The Seventh Seal’ directed by the Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman. It has taken me a long time. But it was certainly worth the wait. A self-imposed wait because I had assumed (mistakenly) that it would be too heavy, too ponderous and too pretentious. The little knowledge on which I had based my value judgement was gained not from having seen any of the films of Bergman but based solely upon the parody of certain scenes from the films of Bergman by other directors and the famous homage by Woody Allen in Love and Death. My prejudice turned out to be an existentially reductive and limiting condition, as far ontologically as you can be from the very essence of Bergman’s oeuvre.
By way of an apology to Ingmar Bergman and a sort of filmic redemption I wish to explain why I now affirm ‘The Seventh Seal’ to be a modern masterpiece and why I want as many people who haven’t seen it to watch the film. There is a tendency in the modern world now to call anything that is even slightly above the average, a masterpiece, but I…
