This is one of those movies, like Seven Samurai, where you watch it for the first time, following one character, and suddenly not-quite-midway through you realize that every character is important and intricately linked into the progression and exposition of the story and themes, so you know before you've even finished that you need to watch it again.
One of the more blatantly philosophical films out there (which is a good thing in this case, by the way, don't think that I'm using the term "blatant" as a negative indicator), Ingred Bergman's The Seventh Seal basically is a contemplation on Death. I'm sure you've read that already, on the back of the Criterion DVD box, on the synopsis written for it at any site where it's listed, in the many reviews, both critical and mundane, and everywhere that even mentions this movie.
So I'm not going to go so much into the focus of the characters on Death, as it were, because you know it all already, even if you haven't seen it. Instead what I'll focus on is the idea of presenting Death or, roughly, imaging him. One of the key things that sets the events in this movie off is that the knight asks Death to play chess and, when Death asks him how he knows he likes chess, the knight answers, "I saw it in a painting." Throughout this movie are shown many different artists, philosophers, and people trying to present what Death is and looks like via different media such as painting, theatre, prayer, actions, and discussions, and yet the main memorable image of this film is precisely the distinctive image of Death himself, the man with the thin lips and large forhead who holds his arm out to envelop on the front cover of the Criterion DVD. A film that invests its interest in Death needs a way of presenting him in a way that isn't completely stuck in the inspirations of other presentations, else focusing an entire work on Death becomes merely repetitious to what has all been said before. Thus we have a very original and thus very compelling image of Death that becomes the inspiration instead of just being an amalgamation of other's ideas.
Thus this movie brilliantly shows Death personified and characterized without holding all the dialog towards Death as a person but Death as a force. By showing that other people "draw" Death in various forms and different symbolic ways, the subjective viewpoint of who Death is is reinforced without having to be stated, which can be condescending.
Then we are so pleasantly allowed to sit back and watch the other characters all invest their energy into their ideas of Death, to mix them together and come up with a complete idea of how Death affects us profoundly and psychologically.
--PolarisDiB
One of the more blatantly philosophical films out there (which is a good thing in this case, by the way, don't think that I'm using the term "blatant" as a negative indicator), Ingred Bergman's The Seventh Seal basically is a contemplation on Death. I'm sure you've read that already, on the back of the Criterion DVD box, on the synopsis written for it at any site where it's listed, in the many reviews, both critical and mundane, and everywhere that even mentions this movie.
So I'm not going to go so much into the focus of the characters on Death, as it were, because you know it all already, even if you haven't seen it. Instead what I'll focus on is the idea of presenting Death or, roughly, imaging him. One of the key things that sets the events in this movie off is that the knight asks Death to play chess and, when Death asks him how he knows he likes chess, the knight answers, "I saw it in a painting." Throughout this movie are shown many different artists, philosophers, and people trying to present what Death is and looks like via different media such as painting, theatre, prayer, actions, and discussions, and yet the main memorable image of this film is precisely the distinctive image of Death himself, the man with the thin lips and large forhead who holds his arm out to envelop on the front cover of the Criterion DVD. A film that invests its interest in Death needs a way of presenting him in a way that isn't completely stuck in the inspirations of other presentations, else focusing an entire work on Death becomes merely repetitious to what has all been said before. Thus we have a very original and thus very compelling image of Death that becomes the inspiration instead of just being an amalgamation of other's ideas.
Thus this movie brilliantly shows Death personified and characterized without holding all the dialog towards Death as a person but Death as a force. By showing that other people "draw" Death in various forms and different symbolic ways, the subjective viewpoint of who Death is is reinforced without having to be stated, which can be condescending.
Then we are so pleasantly allowed to sit back and watch the other characters all invest their energy into their ideas of Death, to mix them together and come up with a complete idea of how Death affects us profoundly and psychologically.
--PolarisDiB