The Seventh Seal

The Seventh Seal has been re-released and I took the opportunity of going to see it with a friend the other day. I had seen it before, on television, many years ago, but to see it at the cinema was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
It is extraordinary, magnificent, and I felt to see it once barely scraped the surface. It's packed with resonance and meaning, and it's picture, not only of medieval everyday life, but of it's world-picture and thought-processes, is matchless.
Actually, on second thoughts, Tarkovsky did it with Andrei Rublev, a film I plan to revisit soon, but it's rare. A world of The Seventh Seal is a world in which scientific thought did not exist on any level; in which religious faith and superstition were the organising principles of everyone's life. The world was a strange, mysterious place and science was unknown. It's a funny film as well, though, with none of the trademark Scandinavian lugubriousness, which, as far as Bergman was concerned, was always a myth anyway There is so much richmess in this film that a single viewing doesn't do it justice, so I think I might break a habit and get myself a copy. The friend who came with me to the cinema had never seen it before and was similarly overwhelmed. We came out of the cinema discussing it excitedly, all the way to the car park. Sometimes it happens, and it always reminds me the enormous part cinema plays in my life. Whatever else is going on, you can always lose yourself for a while, and there's nothing wrong with that, in fact it keeps you going, and something as good as The Seventh Seal amazes and delights. It lit up that dreary time of year when cinema often seems exhausted; the summer blockbuster season's winding down, and the Oscar contenders aren't in the cinemas yet, so, a real treat in every sense.