The Seventh Seal is an all-out religious allegory addressing that most-contemplated question - does God exist? This is one of Ingmar Bergman's best films, may be the best, and it a very fascinating piece of cinema.
A knight (Max von Sydow) comes back from the crusades, in a time the Black Death is controlling the country, and encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot). Death has followed the knight home and now it is time. The knight suggests that they play a game of chess and as long as the knight doesn't lose he can keep on living. The game of chess comes back during the entire movie. The knight travels with his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand) and on the way they meet some people.
In the time the knight has left he wants to find out whether there really is a God, or it is merely a figment of one's imagination. One striking scene where he asks a witch, accused of sleeping with the Devil himself, if he can also speak to the Devil because he must know whether God exists, leaves one with a very good possibility that there is no God. Death exists as supernatural, but a God is not part in that. This possibility is considered in the movie for a long while.
The knight and his squire also meet actor Jof (Nils Poppe) and his wife Mia (Bibi Anderson). They have a little boy named Michael. He also meets Jonas Skat (Erik Strandmark), a womaniser who seduces the wife of a blacksmith (Ake Fridell) and leaves with her while the smith is watching the players' performance. Later, the knight's squire discovers Raval (Bertil Anderberg) - the man who originally convinced the knight to fight for Christendom in the Holy Land, now himself an atheist - as he is looting the bodies of plague victims and attempting to rape a young girl (Gunnel Lindblom). Chased away by the squire, Raval goes to a local pub, where he and the cuckholded blacksmith threaten the simple-minded Jof, forcing him at knifepoint to stand on his head, jump on a table, and dance like a bear. The squire enters, cuts Raval's face with his knife, and takes Jof with him away from the inn. Later the knight comes to the actors' campsite, where he is given strawberries to eat by the kind Jof and Mia, and briefly forgets his own despair.
Joined by the blacksmith, Jof, Mia, their child, and the young girl, the knight and his squire continue on their journey. So does Death, strewing sickness across the land. Survivors whip themselves so that God will spare them, hoping to atone for their sins through self-flagellation. When the knight and his troupe meet the rake Skat and the smith's wife, Jof and the smith square off, apparently ready to fight to death over the woman. However, both men back off. Skat then fakes his own suicide, reuniting the married couple. Afterwards, Death comes and puts an end to Skat in earnest. The rest continue on, and come across a woman who is being burned as a witch. They try to save her, but cannot. Traveling on, they find Raval dying of the plague and again can do nothing to help.
Meanwhile, the knight is losing his ongoing game of chess with Death, so he kicks over the board before his opponent can take his queen. Confused, Death hurries to find the scattered chess pieces. Jof and Mia race away with their child. The knight and and his squire travel on to his castle, where the knight's wife (Inga Landgre) waits for him. Death follows them, entering the castle as the knight prays to God for mercy, while his lady reads from Revelations (from which the film's title quotes). In the morning, Jof, Mia, and their baby have been spared; the plague has passed them. Jof looks up to see Death leading the knight, his squire, the blacksmith and his wife, Raval, and the young girl in a dance across the crest of a hill, the figures silhouetted hand-in-hand in a chain against the dawn sky.
This is a strange movie in a way, but it is beautiful as well. It is something not seen in any contemporary movie, which makes it even more fascinating. A great story, acting brilliance, the expert direction of Bergman, and unmatched cinematography make this a movie not easy to forget very soon. The scenes of the knight playing the game of chess with Death belongs to the greatest in the world of cinema. The famous final dance of death was spontaneously created. Bergman had finished the day's shooting when he saw a beautiful cloud in the sky, and unwilling to let the image go unfilmed, hurriedly got his crew members to dress in the costumes of the already-departed actors and form the silhouetted procession. The scene was shot in just a few minutes, without rehearsal.
The film's imagery is among the most memorable ever put on screen - even if one questions the profundity of Bergman's speculations on the nature of good and evil or even God and the Devil, his image of Death wandering the countryside remains unforgettable.
