This beautifully written and expertly filmed picture launched the international career of its director and made its main actor, Max von Sydow, a star. During The Seventh Seal Bergman tries to find an answer to the question "What is there after death?". The whole film literally breathes an extraordinary authenticity. It's no coincidence that Bergman places his characters into medieval context. Here we see the presence of the plague which gives the world an apocalyptic scenario when people are on the edge between life and death.
The film I will constantly go back to – Wild Strawberries. Produced in 1957, this picture provides the viewer with a compassionate view of life. The plot of Wild Strawberries is based on the main character – 76-year-old Professor Isak Borg. He travels by car from Stockholm to Lund with his daughter-in-law in order to receive an honorary doctorate. During his journey, Isak recalls his past. He thinks about the girl he used to love who married his brother, about his own bad marriage. This travel to the past allows the main character to rethink his own life and to find out where he was wrong.
The Seventh Seal: meaning of human life
Also, it's important to notice that the theme of the relationships between the two generations stands in the first place. We see that Isak's son takes after his father a lot. He is strict, so serious and meticulous. And isn't it good for the young man? Absolutely not. That is no coincidence that most of the film was shot deep in the Swedish countryside. According to Bergman's idea, Wild Strawberries's characters pass through the natural world which instructs them. The aim of that is to realise how life can become atrophied. And unfortunately, it often repeats from one generation to another. The problematic of the film is so close to us. That still makes Bergman's Wild Strawberries actual, with its Christian insistence on the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.