“God has sentenced us to punishment. We shall all perish in the black death. You, standing there like gaping cattle, you who sit there in your glutted complacency, do you know that this may be your last hour? Death stands right behind you. I can see how his crown gleams in the sun. His scythe flashes as he raises it above your heads. Which one of you shall he strike first? You there, who stand staring like a goat, will your mouth be twisted into the last unfinished gasp before nightfall? And you, woman, who bloom with life and self-satisfaction, will you pale and become extinguished before the morning dawns? You back there, with your swollen nose and stupid grin, do you have another year left to dirty the earth with your refuse? Do you know, you insensible fools, that you shall die today or tomorrow, or the next day, because all of you have been sentenced? Do you hear what I say? Do you hear the word? You have been sentenced, sentenced! ”

— Monk in a flagellant procession addressing townspeople

I went to the grocery store yesterday in the small town where I live. News of a coming lock down sent people out for supplies in droves. Standing in the crowded aisles swarming with nervous shoppers, too many to maintain their social distancing protocols, I witnessed the fear that I’ve been fighting in myself. For someone outside of the high risk population, I am not afraid of the virus. I am respectful of the things I must do to not spread it myself, but the virus is not likely to kill me. But looking at the empty shelves, overhearing employees whispering about layoffs, seeing the carts overloaded with staple foods, I became afraid.

The response to the pandemic is pandemonium. The people hoard food, and the stock market crashes. Public officials walk out during their live on-air presentations. We receive images from around the world where public spaces are empty. We read projections, the numbers of those who will die. We stay indoors, forgoing social gatherings. Restaurants and bars close. And all large buildings once full with the living are empty and dim — all except the hospitals that brace for the coming waves.

In all of this, we confront not a virus but the horror of death. That little black bird we always shoo away from our thoughts can no longer be scared off our shoulder. Most of us will survive, but our feigned ignorance of death will not.

That awakening drove the panicked into the grocery store. And as I watched them, I joined them. I thought of our basic needs, searching among the half empty shelves for food. And when I returned home, I knew it was time to watch The Seventh Seal again.

The Seventh Seal (1957) dir. Ingmar Bergman — Courtesy Filmgrab — *The Seventh Seal* (1957) dir. Ingmar Bergman — Courtesy Filmgrab

Things as They Are

“I’m only painting things as they are. Everyone else can do as he likes.”

— Painter speaking to the Knight's squire Jöns

The Seventh Seal is Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece. It is, perhaps, the greatest film ever made. It follows the medieval knight Antonius Block who was convinced to go off to fight in the crusades. Ten years later, he returns to his native Sweden only to find it devastated by an ongoing plague. While resting on a rocky shore, Death visits him. After a life without any meaningful act, the Knight challenges Death to a game of chess — it gives him a reprieve, enough time to do one meaningful thing before he leaves.

What follows is a kaleidoscope of humanity, bright with the illumination of plague. We witness the many ways that humans might confront the fact of life and death, confrontations made palpable by the roaming scourge of boils and vomit and swift, agonizing ends.

The Seventh Seal reminds us that plagues rid humanity of any illusions about our time here. Plagues do not change the ultimate forms of existence. They only chant, over and over, what was already true: we were always going to die.

In an early scene, the Knight’s squire Jöns — who deals with the brutality of the battlefield and the black death with humor, drink, and the company of friendly women — follows his lord to a church. There, the Knight contemplates the big questions while Jöns stays back to cavort with the artist painting on the church’s walls.

Jöns looks over the art, noting to its creator that the scenes of dying peasants is depressing. The painter says that it is not the artist’s job to worry about the effect of his art. He merely shows the truth of what is happening. One cannot avoid thinking that such a defense works for the film as a whole, and that here as we talk about plagues during a time of a pandemic, we must remember that it is important to talk about death and allow ourselves to think about it because it is happening. All around us. Yes, of course, it is happening now in the time of a pandemic, but it was always happening.

We are waking up from a long stupor, when death was a private matter suffered inside of houses. Death visited the neighborhood one family at a time. When it knocked on the door across the street, we rationalized it an unlikely tragedy. No reason to worry ourselves with it.

But in a pandemic we are facing this visitor as a collective. Those who are at risk know that they might die very soon. Those who are not at risk know that they might spread death with the shaking of a hand. Just as we were always going to die, we have always been intertwined in the struggle of life.

We take measures now to not spread the illness, doing our part to save others, and others do their part to save us. But we were always doing that. Every time you ate a sandwich or took a shower or drove to the park, you were at every moment silently helped along by the labor of others — those immigrants picking tomatoes in the heat, the bright-vested workers on the roadside fixing the waterlines, the cashier who sells you gas by the gallon.

The artist must show us death so that we remember it. And in remembering it, we might also appreciate life and those who help us live it.

The Emptiness is a Mirror

“The emptiness is a mirror turned toward my own face. I see myself in it, and I am filled with fear and disgust.”

— The Knight Antonius Block giving confession to Death, disguised as a priest

With death tolls and rumors of supply shortages, we now cannot stop thinking about death. Where once our culture fiercely avoided the topic, it is now the only topic imaginable. What do we see when we stare into it?

We see now that the long secularization of society somehow forgot to weave comfort for the dying. We see now that the youth we celebrate is precious only because it is fleeting. We see now that all the events and activity of public life is reducible to the lonely places we keep our beds. We understand more about our lives now than ever before.

Each character in The Seventh Seal represents a way to handle the anxiety of death, and these coping mechanisms around death are inextricably tied to ways to live. In fact, they are one in the same.

You have the cuckold Plog, who waves his hammer around in empty threats. For him, the performance of masculinity holds the thoughts of death at bay. His wife Lisa seduces the traveling performer Skat, reveling in her power. For her, the performance of femininity calms the thoughts of oblivion.

Mia, the actress, is a loving wife and mother, who takes care of those around her. Jof, the actor, is a loving husband and father, content to revel in his otherworldly visions and outward silliness. The squire Jöns pursues a nihilist’s course of hedonism and sarcastic distance, though he keeps protecting the innocent — belying a more complex machinery at work.

Antonius Block, the Knight, questions everything. When Death himself asks him, “Won’t you ever stop asking questions?” the Knight replies, “No. Never.” He can never stop seeking answers about the existence of God and the secrets behind Death’s shroud. Until the very end, he calls out to God for an answer. The emptiness of a universe with death and no reason for existence is unbearable to him, and yet he faces the horror, he calls out to it.

There is a character who turns from the seminary to looting the dead. There is a girl who materializes the fear of death into her personal lord Satan.

And finally, there is the mute girl, rescued from a rape by Jöns early in the film. The things she has seen in her plague ridden town are so unspeakable that she is rendered unable to speak. Though her actions communicate. When her would-be rapist appears in the forest dying of plague, she tries to offer the man a sip of water. And when Death arrives at the Knight’s castle at the end of the film, she is the only one smiling. She kneels down, as if in prayer, and speaks her only line of the film. “It is finished.”

These characters show us the many forms we take handling the questions of being. Their depictions are neither endorsements nor condemnations. They simply are. And when we see them flickering on the screen against the night in our self imposed isolation, we see ourselves as we brace against the rising tide of a virus.

It is not the time to turn away. It is not the time to forget. The pandemic is a time to face, to discover what it was we were doing all those years before. It is in this discovery that we might find the threads to guide us until our deaths, whether they be tomorrow from the virus or decades from now.

It is in the middle passage of the film when the Knight has supper with the traveling family of performers: Jof, the fool who can see the truth of things; Mia, the practical mother who cares for others; Mikael, the baby who embodies the eternal rejuvenation of children. The family reveals the blessing that is always there, that is forever in reach, to give birth and propel life forward again. It is our one resistance to death, our only path to forgiveness for our failures — we see death but turn to life and say, “Again.”

In all of his wandering, the Knight finally finds a family for whom a kind act could give meaning. Shepherding them away from the plague infested coast fulfills the promise of the reprieve afforded by the game of chess with Death itself.

They dine on fresh picked strawberries and sup of fresh milk. It is there that the Knight understands that this memory, if only this one, can make a lifetime worthwhile. It is when we are together with the hope of a future generation that we can make sense of the mess and struggle of earthly things. And all the while, in the background of this scene, hangs the mask of a skull twisting gently in the breeze. Death watches over everything, even the simple holiness of a shared meal.

And what does that mean for us who now feel death’s presence at the dinner table? Are we to learn the lesson of the Knight? Should we take care to hold the blessed moments carefully?

Death will come, yes. But only after life. And in life — even in a pandemic — there are things that are sweet. Sweeter, even, than strawberries.

“I shall remember this moment. The silence, the twilight, the bowls of strawberries and milk, your faces in the evening light. Mikael sleeping. Jof with his lyre. I’ll try to remember what we have talked about. I’ll carry this memory between my hands as carefully as if it were a bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk. And it will be an adequate sign — it will be enough for me.”

— The Knight Antonius Block