Rating: 10.0 / 10
Directed By: Ingmar Bergman	Written By: Ingmar Bergman	Released: 1958

By far one of the most engaging and profound films of all time, the legendary director Ingmar Bergman brings us the story of a knight, Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), returning from ten years fighting in the Crusades to his home country to find it ravaged by the Black Plague. This leads him to question the very nature of life and death, yearning with desperation to see some tangible manifestation of evidence for the existence of God.

Throughout the film, Block's search embodies the spirit by which human beings have been driven for millenia: the quest to discover the purpose of human existence and the question of whether God exists. The experiences to which he has been subjected for ten years as a knight of the Crusades, as well as what he must now bear witness to in his homeland - innocent girls being persecuted as witches and clergy commanding peasants to flog themselves in repentance for the sin that has supposedly brought about the plague, among other things - continually confront him with a hopeless emptiness.

Throughout the film, Block engages in what has become one of the most profound metaphors of our existence: a chess match with death himself. This game we play, living our lives attempting to prolong them in the face of the looming uncertainty of death, is at the core of the existence of us all, and it is for this reason that Block's chess match becomes so relevant to us. His dialogue with death as well as with his atheist squire are remarkable, revealing the universal sentiments that nearly all human beings share, regardless of how resolved they project themselves to be.

There is no question that The Seventh Seal is one of the great masterpieces of cinema. It is a film rich with symbolism and an engaging exploration of mankind's biggest search. The environment that Bergman creates with this film is one of fear and trepidation, but also one that illustrates the beauty of the human experience and the honest search for truth among our world's greatest mysteries.