Death In Ingman Bergman's The Seventh Seal

To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure; at least through the eyes of one Albus Dumbledore, when he is asked why he doesn’t fear the thought of dying (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 215). “The Seventh Seal”, a film by Ingman Bergman, however, dramatizes death as a character the protagonist interacts with and not simply an unavoidable force a nature to be faced at any given moment. Death walks among man in the blank-and-white film, even if it is only witnessed by two of the characters for most of the movie until the very end.
The main protagonist, Antonius Block, meets Death straight away as the film opens up on a beach where it seems only he and his Squire, Jöns, are the survivors of a shipwreck. Recognizing …show more content…
He is painting “The Dance of Death” to “remind people they will die”, but is willing to paint something happier as “one has to make a living. At least until the plague claims (him)” (The Seventh Seal). For the artist, his work fulfills a duel purpose. It reminds the people who see it that Death is everywhere no matter what, it encourages those who are frightened of what comes after death to seek shelter under the wings of the priests, and it grants him a way to make a living through the Church. The painter acts as a physical creator of the representation of Death within the film and the scene he had designed, “The Dance of Death”, is the same scene that Jof witnesses in his final vision of the screenplay where Block and the companions who followed him to his castle were dancing a sad dance together with Death leading the way. This representation acts as not only a fierce foreshadowing of events to come within the film to the viewers, but also as a small screenshot into the future for Jöns to be witness to even if he isn’t aware of it. Jöns would probably think back on this moment with disparaging clarity when he is actually enacting the unrealistic image later on in the