Block is approached by Death (Bengt Ekerot) who tells the knight his time is up, but Block challenges him to a game of chess first, as way of postponing - and possibly escaping - his inevitable fate.
As the chess game unfolds, Block and Jöns slowly make their way towards Block's castle, passing through villages ravaged by disease, and drawing to them a growing caravan of refugees looking to outrun the plague, including a family of actors, Jof (Nils Poppe), his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and their infant son, Mikael (Tommy Karlsson).
Jof has the gift of seeing visions, soon after we first meet his troupe he sees the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus walking through a field, and - eventually - is the first person to see Death playing chess with Block.
And it is the joy his young son brings to Block that persuades the knight to change his tactics in the game of chess, to save the young boy instead of himself.
I'm surprised it's taken me this long to get around to watching Ingmar Bergman's legendary meditation on death.
Perhaps because so many of its visuals have become iconic over the years and oft imitated (for instance, of course, the whole 'playing chess with Death' is probably better known to the general public for its central role in Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey!), I wasn't quite sure what to expect.
While there are a couple of minor Medieval scuffles, The Seventh Seal is by no means an action film, instead concentrating on the growing ensemble of characters whose lives interact with Block and Jöns. And while Block may be the main protagonist, as it is he who draws Death into the chess game, Jöns is the more proactive character 'in the real world'.
It's Jöns who rescues the silent girl (Gunnel Lindblom) from a would-be rapist and brings her along on their travels. He also rescues Jof from drunken villagers who blame him for Blacksmith Plog's (Åke Fridell) wife, Lisa (Inga Gill), running off with another actor, Jonas Skat (Erik Strandmark).
Beautifully shot and framed by Bergman, The Seventh Seal is wholly absorbing and Max Von Sydow is a striking figure as the taciturn knight who draws the eye in every scene he's in.
However, after years of facing existential threats, fighting in the Holy Land and now the plague at home, agnostic Block wants concrete answers about the meaning of life and God before he dies.
He feels that by engaging Death he may find them, but he's also willing to treat with the Devil through a witch (Maud Hansson) who is about to be burned alive.
Unfortunately, again, he finds no answers because the supposed witch - proclaimed to be in league with the Devil by priests and soldiers - is just an innocent woman, facing her own death.
While the film does have an upbeat ending, it's main focus, I believe, is getting the viewer to contemplate their own mortality, which, for me, is why I count this as a "horror film" - even though I would expect I'd be in the minority who say so.
The Seventh Seal tells us that everyone has a different way of coping with inevitable final curtain: for example, some create art (music, paintings, performances etc), some just want to "have fun", and others resort to fundamentalist religious flagellation.
The film poses questions it cannot possibly answer, which I suppose is the whole point: not to dwell on what's to come, but what we can do while we're here.
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