The Seventh Seal - film

The Seventh Seal is playing at Regent Square theater in Pittsburgh this sunday at 7:30pm. Classic film by Ingmar Bergman. Antonius Block is a Knight and Crusader returning from Jerusalem. He is tired, disillusioned with life. He searches for god but cannot find him. He is confronted by death, and challenges death to a chess match for his life. He continues his journey meeting various people along the way - Bergman is showing the "human condition" while the Knight travels. He meets an actor and his family and joins them for a picnic of wild strawberries on a beautiful afternoon. He says: "I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency." the Knight has an "epoche," or a moment of reflected consciousness, where he experiences the beauty of life: delicious strawberries, fresh milk, a young mom and dad and their beautiful son. you see, life can be very good. How does it end? Can anyone really "beat" death? I like the scene where the Knight has his epoche, but the scene that is really hair raising is when the Knight confronts a woman who has been detained for being a "Witch." There is a plague, and groups of people are whipping themselves to show their piety and desire for deliverance from god. I guess people blame themselves for the plague, because of their sin, but eventually they look for other victims: witches and jews. Anyway, this poor young woman has been tortured, and she has confessed to being a witch and talking to satan. the Knight realizes that if the girl really has talked to satan, then god must exist - Genesis, remember? Satan is a fallen angel of god? So if there is a devil there must be a god. Anyway the Knight asks her if she knows where satan can be found and she says, look into my eyes and you will find him. he stares into her eyes (mind you, she is near death, tortured) and she asks, what do you see? And he says.......nothing. His squire suggests that they kill the guards and free the poor girl, but the Knight says she is too far gone, her hands are broken, she is near death. They wait and watch her burned at the stake. Grim movie - its about life. Life is grim. I have never seen this on the big screen before - I love this movie - I used to show it in my intro political philosophy class after spending a week on existentialism - I dont know if most of the students understood existentialism, but they liked the movie. I tried to teach them that existence PRECEDES essense, and most understood that. I think they also understood freedom. But the being in itself and being for others confused them.