“Obsessed with the ideas of love, life, death, good and evil, [Bergman] mediates as he goes, taking in symbols, in parables and images that are often of breathtaking beauty.”
When disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns home from the Crusades to find Sweden in the grip of the Plague, he challenges Death (Bengt Ekerot) to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof (Nils Poppe) and his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and becomes determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives... The most iconic of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpieces, The Seventh Seal is also quite possibly one of the most powerful and memorable examples of late ’50s and early ’60s European arthouse cinema.
