The knight Antonius Block returns from the Crusades a broken man. Doubt has replaced the conviction that once sustained him as a soldier of God, creating a chasm of meaninglessness in his life. Incapable of faith, Block now desires certainty of God’s existence while seeking to perform “one meaningful deed,” a task made doubly urgent by the ubiquity of death in plague times.
Ingmar Bergman communicates this existential predicament through bold allegory: Death, personified as a man with ghostly pale skin shrouded in black, is disarmingly calm yet decisive in speech and movement, as if to emphasize its impersonal and unavoidable nature.
The knight seeks to delay his demise by engaging Death in a chess match to be played on his journey home. Along the way Block and his squire, Jons, meet Jof and Mia, traveling entertainers caring for their infant son. Through this acquaintance Block realizes the value of human connection: He discovers some degree of happiness and fulfillment through fellowship, and Bergman makes clear that these moments of togetherness are not made trivial by their fleeting nature but, to the contrary, all the more important. As his bond with the family grows, Block will make the decision to put their lives above his own as Death closes in on the group.
In many ways this film is like an anti-realist fever dream. The characters are allegorical types: Block the spiritual seeker pained by doubt, his squire the godless jokester who both condemns and affirms life with a sneer, Jof the artistic dreamer, and his son the promise of a brighter tomorrow, and in this context a symbol of Christ. Nearly every shot is carefully composed and meticulously executed, with romantic symmetry and thematic resonance at the forefront of a unique visual experience.
These idealized elements of storytelling might put off certain viewers. Isn't allegory an affront to the refined sensibilities of a modern, intelligent audience? Is it possible to make up in other areas what this film lacks in subtlety? Such questions miss the point. The Seventh Seal is a great film not in spite of its apparent heavy-handedness, but because of it. Like its protagonist, The Seventh Seal addresses profound questions without self-consciousness. Sincerity is the value central to this film, without which every other value is empty. For Block this means pursuing in earnest a meaning for his life, and discovering that he is still a soldier ready to die for what he believes. The difference is that he no longer believes in God, however much he wants to.
Life is a long ordeal of unrelenting cosmic solitude, and then it ends. The important thing is to accept the constraints of mortality and go from there. Block was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for God, and he remains steadfast in this selflessness even as the locus of his value system shifts. If God exists, we devote ourselves to him. If all we have is each other, then what? Great art has much to say on the matter.