Lyrics
Life is bigger
It's bigger
And you, you are not me
The lengths that I will go to
The distance in your eyes
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
Every whisper
Of every waking hour
I'm choosing my confessions
Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no, I've said too much
I set it up
Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed
What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I've said too much
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream
That was just a dream
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try
But that was just a dream, try, cry, why, try
That was just a dream, just a dream, just a dream
Dream
I only started to appreciate R.E.M. when they broke up. But even when I didn't care much about them, I thought this to be a great song. I linked it to one of the most famous movies ever made, about a man who is well, losing his religion.
The Movie: The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet) (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
The 1950's and 1960's are considered to be the golden years of European art cinema. I have yet to see many of these movies made in this period, but I have mostly liked those I saw. It is also considered very highbrow, very intellectual cinema, that might be offputting for many people. Perhaps no one has that reputation more than Ingmar Bergman. The DVD cover of The Seventh Seal explicitly proclaims that Bergman, along with Andrei Tarkovsky and Michelangelo Antonioni rejected the simplicty of Hollywood movies, and strifed to make art that would stimulate the intellect. Now, I consider myself a pretty open-minded movie watcher, but I was a bit intimidated by the prospect of his movies, so this viewing of The Seventh Seal was the first time I saw a Bergman movie. I thought it was very good, for the expected reasons and for some unexpected ones.
I had many misconceptions about this movie, based on what I read about it. As I read someone tweet once, I basically expected this whole movie to be about Max von Sydow and Death playing chess on the beach, while discussing the mysteries of life. Well, they do that (but for a small part of the movie) and Bergman also does deal very extensively with questions of God. Does He exist? And if He does, why doesn't He show Himself to us? The two main characters of the movie are Jons and Antonius Block (he is played by Max von Sydow). They have just returned to Sweden from the crusades and they are pretty disilussioned. Jons has become a cynical man who has lost his faith in God completely. Antonius is in the process of losing his. When he is visited by Death he challenges it ( he, she?) to a chess match. If Antonius wins he'll be set free, if he loses, he'll die. They play with a lot of hiatuses, during which Antonius contemplates concepts like God and heaven, and whether he can ever know for sure whether these exist or not. To have true knowledge about these things is in fact for him even more important than whether they exist or not. Jons and Antonius have good reasons to doubt God. Everybody in Sweden has, as the country suffers from the plague. Did God send this plague? If He did, why would He be so cruel? And if He didn't, why doesn't He do anything about it? As you see, Bergman is not interested in subtlety here. His themes are very bluntly outlined. I think that's a good thing. Subtlety has become a pretty overrated concept in movies.
So yeah all these writers that praise the movie because it deals seriously and intelligently with such existential questions are absolutely right. And the image of Death and Antonius playing chess on the beach has become rightfully iconic. It is quite unfortunate though that writing on this movie focuses so much on this, thereby making the movie seem more 'highbrow' and inaccesible than it is. A couple of entries ago, I wrote about Chicken with Plums and how it is inspired by traditional folk tales. The Seventh Seal often reminds of one too. It feels like an original, filmed folk tale. This may be especially clear in the lauded final shot, when we see Death being followed by a group of people. They all are dancing. But this is also pretty clear in the story structure. The drama is conrasted by humor and touches of light romance. The heroic intellectuals are contrasted by cowards and fools, and ordinary farmers.
Yes, indeed this is often times a very humorous movie. Woody Allen always claims to have been heavily influenced by Bergman, and you can see it very well here. Especially the influence this movie has on Hannah and Her Sisters is very evident. There is this famous scene in Hannah and Her Sisters in which Woody Allen is depressed by life and tries to kill himself, only the gun doesn't work. In shock he wanders through the streets and ends up in a cinema that plays a movie by the Marx Brothers. The joy expressed in that movie gives him back his joy in life. There is a scene here reminiscent of that when we our characters happen upon a performance by a comedy troupe. Watching them perform, they forget all their troubles and enjoy life. The sequence becomes even more interesting when a performer starts singing a romantic, joyous song and Bergman cuts to backstage where an actor is wooing a girl. For about three minutes we are watching a tender romamtic comedy. That Bergman has no problem shifting tones expertly becomes even more clear when the comedy performance is disrupted when a group of harbingers of the apocalypse arrives at the scenes and starts singing dark songs about the end of times. All of these scenes flow seamlessly into one another, without the tone feeling off once. Bergman is clearly a serious director, but also a technically great one. Someone who even in a film of often such serious contemplation, commits to a very playful style, executing it greatly.
Not only is this often a humorous movie, it's humor and style often feel much more contemporary than they are. Jons has some lines which are so typical of Woody Allen, they nearly pull you out of the movie. The most obvious such line is perhaps 'Our crusade is such madness that only a real idealist could have thought it up.' Jons in general is being given several oneliners to say, which nowadays we would call zingers. Some of them go beyond Woody Allen's humor and would be right at home in the Lethal Weapon movies. The movie's mix of humor and romance with existential questions and serious drama is perhaps best exemplified by the characters of Jof and Mia. They are a husband and wife who are part of the comic troupe I wrote about earlier. They are presented as pretty loving and ordinary people, only Jof often has religious visions (this sets up the final shot with the dancing people following death). He sees for example Maria and baby Jesus. These visions pose interesting religious questions, but they are handled with a lot of humor. And then there is the scene where Antonius joins them for a dinner, which is one of the most simple, but beautiful expressions of the pleasure of company ever filmed.
Still the best scene of the movie may be the scene where Bergman gets self-referential. In a church Jons has a conversation with a mural painter, asking him why he is painting such depressing images. The painter to that responds that depressing images scare us, and thus makes us think and ask important questions. When Jons asks him what happens when they think, the wonderful answer of the painter is that they only become more scared. Jons than asks him what he'll do if the people stop caring about his art, because of all those horrific images. The painter responds to this that he'll start making some funny mural paintings and the people will come back. This seems basically like the method Bergman uses in this movie. This is by the way not just a throwaway scene. There are other scenes here in which Bergman deals with how an artist can be capable of making the art he wants. That is just as much a subject here as the silence of God.
