The Seventh Seal

“The punishments and rewards for human beings for their actions on earth are all defined in the Scripture, so they should focus on doing the right things to receive the rewards from God.”

The Seventh Seal has been directed by the Ernst Ingmar Bergman. He was born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1918. The son of a Lutheran pastor, had a hard childhood, marked by psychological and corporal punishment, frequent themes in his works. He began making and directing theater as a teenager. He became famous as a writer in Sweden, wrote to the greatest filmmakers of the time, and with smiles of One Night of Love made his name as a film director, but it was The Seventh Seal won international fame. In addition to this, he was primarily responsible for the recovery, to the Swedish film, the prestige that it had lost in the 20s, with the departure of important filmmakers to Hollywood (Bragg, pp. 92).

The environment of the movie 'The Seventh Seal' is based on one of the darkest periods of apocalyptic and medieval Europe. The title is a reference to the biblical book called Apocalypse or Revelation. According to this scripture, in God's hand, there is a scroll sealed with seven seals and the opening of each of these stamps implies a curse on humanity, but the opening of the seventh is what actually leads to the end of time. In the unfolding of the plot becomes clear concern that the director seeks in the past, a period that brings up issues still present in the contemporary world. By doing so, Bergman reconstitute the Swedish Middle Ages, although the work of historical research and reconstruction of society at that time had been carefully prepared, but mainly to expose the afflictions of the world in which lived. Thus, Bergman search in the medieval world the apocalyptic fear is the fear that the world could end suddenly or that he is gradually decimated by plague , which ultimately expose the director own concern with this same issue.

The fourteenth century, which is the diegetic time of The Seventh Seal marks the peak of the crisis of the feudal system, which was represented by the triplet “war, pestilence and famine,” This triplet along with death, symbolically make up the “four horsemen of the apocalypse” in late Middle Ages. Initially, the decay of feudalism stems from structural problems, when in the eleventh century, the high population density in Europe, determined the need for growth in food production, leading the feudal lords to increase the exploitation of the servants, who began a series of revolts and trails, exacerbating the already existing crisis. The cross between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries represented another setback for the feudal system, as their most immediate objectives were not achieved. These unachieved objectives include Jerusalem was not reconquered by the Christians, Christianity was not reunited, and the feudal crisis was not even minimized (Moon, pp. 14). The triplet “war, pestilence and famine”, which marked the fourteenth century, ...