Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.
The idea of death as a chess player probably first appeared about twenty minutes after the rules of chess were solidified and codified. The most enduring image of death as a chess player comes from Ingmar Bergman’s Det Sjunde Inseglet (The Seventh Seal). I’d seen bits and pieces of this in the past, but I’m not sure I’d seen the whole thing until today. Of all Bergman’s films, this is the most well known, and the one people seem to know. At the very least, people know the image of Max von Sydow and Bengt Ekerot playing chess near the sea (as in the picture above).
As I say, I’d seen bits of this, and it would appear that the bits I had seen were those of the chess game. I expected Det Sjunde Inseglet to be a sort of My Dinner with Andre where the two play chess and have deep existential discussions about the meanings of life and death. I’m not sure why I thought that, and I’m pleased to have been wrong. I’m not sure that this would have become the classic it is had it just been a literal chess game instead of the much more figurative chess game it is.
