| Swedish director Ingmar Bergman(14 July 1918-30 July 2007) was one of the most outstanding film artists in the world. He taked the existence (or non-existence) of God for the creat kernel, recorded human's meditation about life and death, virtue and vice, existense and emptiness by the camera. He portrayed the struggle of humanity toward soul and flesh, love and desire, original sin and redemption by light and shadow. Ingmar Bergman summarized "the Seventh Art" as serious philosophy topics with mysterious temperament and frosty philosophy.The Seventh Seal(1957) is one of the most partial films by Ingmar Bergman, and it is also the last one talked about faith in his flims. This film as"Bergman's modern morality play"takes the journey of a medieval knigth(Max von Sydow) as ordinate, issues the existence (or non-existence) of God as abscissa to draw a map of human's soul before the end of the world.The breakthrough point of the article is the director's autobiography, Laterna Magica. This article believes that the father who was a strict priest and the memory of childhood keeped Bergman's soul in captivity at the church, and formed two themes of running through the director's life:the existence (or non-existence) of God and death. The title "the seventh seal"comes from the Book of Revelation, last part of Bible. The director combined with the social backgroud--the Europe in chaos after the Second World War. The article believes the Seventh Seal is a modernity of Revelation. Bergman created a eternal picture that a monumental game of chess between knight and the personification of Death. The director discussed some Christianity quertions, such as " the existence (or non-existence) of God ", "silence of God"as well as"the feasibility of redemption"and so on. Bergman considered that God and Death were two faces of Janus. In the last, the Jofs came into the new world in the first light of morning. They proved that love and faith are the only way to get redemption. |
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