Move Review: The Seventh Seal

This film has been so well covered elsewhere I won't bore you with the usual "it's a true classic film" crap. It's also summarised well in a great song by Scott Walker.

It is good, no question - a superb treatise on death and hopelessness that has, bizarrely, a bunch of laugh out loud moments!

I can't give it a higher score than 8/10 because I just didn't have that kind of fun, and afterwards I felt a bit nonplussed by the whole thing, compared to how I thought I would feel.

True movie classics have this problem, everyone thinks they know what to expect, all the best bits tend to have been spoiled by decades of list shows and personal recommendations (The Third Man is the worst victim of this for me), and The Seventh Seal is no exception.

It also seriously suffers from the "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" effect - frequently scenes set off a silly set of references (particularly in the self flagellation scenes I kept having visions of guys hitting themselves in the face with wooden blocks).

Its budget shows sometimes, though this is only to be expected given the different setting, and they did a great job of hiding the shortcomings of their budget here.

Acting is a bit patchy, and I think this is what costs it true classic status in my eyes and dates it quite seriously - some of the actors are hamming it up big time (the blacksmith and his wife, the actor) and I can't reconcile their sylised performances with the fantastic and fairly naturalistic Knight, and the outstanding Squire.

The squire by the way is utter genius and acts as our narrator and our link into the world, asking the questions and making the observations that draw us into the events.

Its a great film, and I'm not some nutter who can't see that, but if everyone was acting in the same style I'd enjoy it more, but the difference between the actors' styles really stops it being one of my favourites.

A