Is this babby's first existentialist movie...

Is this babby's first existentialist movie? Because I went in expecting some profound questions worth answering but left confused at how easily interpretable the film was.

What am I missing here?

>existentialist movies

>What am I missing here?

Nothing, Bergman is a pleb that only plebs like Tarkovsky like anyway, and he was really more of a shitposter than a filmmaker anyway so fuck him too.

t. pleb

Seventh Seal is pretty straight forward
go watch Persona

its praised mostly because it came out in 1957, when all movies were positive upbeat wankfests about how great it is to alive.

pff everyone was so down because of ww2
pussies

Watch his religious trilogy
Silence, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light (i forget the order)
And Cries and Whispers, I think those are his best. They get much more intimate than his 50's movies

Also remember that Bergman isn't a hack like Godard, he's not just name-dropping authors and throwing his intellectualness at you. His films are meant to be felt more than anything.

Think about how he uses close-ups especially. They're like a form of movie modernity (empathetic reflection and vulnerability) except way before the french new wave and all that.

Is the theme really just "death is inescapable"? Because I was expecting more too.

>i can sum up the theme in 3 words therefore it's bad
You make it seem like he just wrote that mantra on the screen and left it on for 90 minutes

Dude I never said it was bad. Is that really what it is though? The only reason it's confounded me maybe is because I went in expecting the knight to cheat Death and shaping my perception of the movie around that.

Bergman had a borderline-abusively strict Lutheran upbringing, and was an atheist by age 8 although he never fully came to terms with it until he made Winter Light, according to his biography.

His movies are intensely autobiographical, so they have to be seen in this context. Seventh Seal is no exception.
Short answer, yeah, that's pretty much the theme. Death is inescapable, so there's no sense in really fighting it. There's dark humor (tree cutting scene) as well as dramatic depression (chess game).

I think what's important is that we don't see movies, especially Bergman movies, as things that convey ideas that can be transcribed into text. Rather, they convey ideas with emotional associations (images can never be perfectly described, especially with the emotions they evoke).
What's powerful about the Seventh Seal is the grandiosity of the chess game and how he walks the thin line between comedy and tragedy so powerfully.

Seventh Seal was boring. Did he make any movies that aren't boring?

Yeah, the film was beautifully shot, I can't deny that. Pretty captivating overall.

I might just have to rewatch it tomorrow, since some of the major thematic tidbits like the dialogue in the church went over my head and I didn't bother rewinding to fully digest them.

Daily reminder that Vargtimmen is the top bergman kino

>chess as a metaphor

>knight+bishop combo
>church and state
>crusades reference

>Sir Block. I'm Death.

Bergman was decades ahead of his time

>he wasn't alone
hmmm

>le deep fags
>le plebfags
what the fuck do you want out of a film? read a book stupid nigger

Exactly, that's the point of this thread

Yeah, I thought it was fairly simple and straightforward. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Wild Strawberries was more complex without going into mindfuck territory like Persona.

>profound questions

like what?

>metaphor

What's behind the window?

>Seventh Seal
>existentialist movie

You have no idea what these words mean

>google 'existentialist movie'
>literally first thing that comes up is Seventh Seal
Okay kid.

>I went in expecting the knight to cheat Death

Bill and Ted did

Oh fuck it, i've been putting this off long enough. Don't know anything about Bergman but that image of Death has intrigued me since the first time i saw it. Downloading it now