Trollheart

MESSAGE IN THE MOVIE?

This is a new section I'll be applying to any movies I feature from now on, in which I try to see what the moral behind the film is, what the writer or director was trying to convey to us, what we're supposed to take from it.

Here I think the underlying message is that you can't cheat Death. You can play him at any game you want, and despite your skill level at chess, ludo, cards or Nintendo, you're going to lose, because Death always has the last word. I think Block realises this; he knows he is going to die and he can't stop it - his boastful “If I win I live” is nothing more than that, a piece of bravado which he knows fully will never happen - but wants to delay the event long enough to try to do something meaningful with his last days.

Death is all around in The Seventh Seal, as if to remind us that it is an all-powerful, irresistible force, and even the priests with their faith in God and their adherents who believe repentance will save them, know that they too will die, almost glorying in it. They know (or think they know) that they will go to Heaven, whereas any sinners who succumb to the Black Death will be cast into the Pit. In many ways, these are the days they've been waiting for: Judgement Day is coming, and finally, instead of just spitting fire about it from the pulpit or the street corner where they have been ignored or at best tolerated, the servants of God on Earth have the chance to exercise real power, to show that what they were saying was not just rhetoric. God is real, they thunder. The Devil is real. You are about to be judged. The world is ending. Make your choice, and make the correct one.

Another message that can be taken from the film perhaps is that no matter how terrible our lives may be, we can try to make up for it before the end, and make our existence here have been worth something. In helping the actors escape the clutches of Death, and perhaps also easing the witch-girl's passage into the next world, the knight must feel that he has, finally, made a difference and done something special with his life.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the idea that God is not listening comes through very clearly. The film has been tagged with the theme of “the silence of God”, by people far better versed in this than I could ever be, and you can see Block's frustration as he fumes “Why must God hide himself in clouds?” He wants God to reveal himself, to prove he is there, to tell the knight there is, has been, a point to his life, and that there is somewhere to go when he dies. But of course God remains silent. Whether this is because He does not wish to respond, or is not there to respond, is of course left unanswered. Someone once said that if we ever learned the true meaning of life we would go insane. Some things are best left a mystery. But Block rages at what he sees as God's indifference as the people die and wonders why he fought for Him in the Holy Land, if his reward on returning to his home is more misery and death? Hardly a hero's welcome. But God does not care, if He exists. What are the petty concerns of men to such as He?

LAUGHING IN THE FACE OF DEATH
It's an interesting thing about this movie that, dour and stark as it is, with a downbeat message and certainly nothing approaching a happy ending, there is a lot of comedy in it. For me, it plays like a Shakespeare comedy at times. Plog, the lovelorn blacksmith looking for his errant wife. Jonas, the actor who pretends to kill himself and then ironically loses his life when Death cuts down the tree he is hiding in. The hilarious conversation between Jons and Plog on the subject of women. It all seems out of place somehow, and yet fits in perfectly, a kind of “live while you can” attitude. As one of the characters says, if these are the last days then they may as well enjoy them while they can. A commendable attitude, and you can see how, with the Plague burning through Europe and living to the next day as uncertain as a gamble on a horse, people decided to throw caution, and inhibition to the wind.

Reminds me a little of the streets of Berlin, six hundred years later, as related in my article on Downfall, when the citizens drank and danced and screwed as the Russians got closer to the German capital. Those people knew they were doomed, but were determined to live their final hours without fear or care. So too the Europeans, who greeted each new day as an unexpected bonus, and checked to see who of their family and friends had died, lived live to its fullest, trying to put the spectre of death, always looming large in the foreground, behind them.

So the many instances of comic relief and lightheartedness here are not in fact anachronisms at all; on the contrary, they fit in perfectly with a world where death stalked you at every step, and each day could be your last on the Earth. What would it benefit anyone to spend their time fretting in their hovels, or trembling behind mighty castle walls, waiting for the approaching touch of the Reaper? Far better to squeeze the last life had to give out of it, and enjoy the remaining days, hours or even minutes.

This is why the priest who comes through the village is so scandalised that the people are watching a comedy act. He soon sets them right, and a dark atmosphere of doom and despair settles over the previously jolly gathering, as he self-righteously and contemptuously tells them they are all damned, and they had better make their peace with God before they are taken. His crew are a miserable lot: carrying huge crosses, whipping themselves, in rags and moaning and lamenting their lot. Which way would you prefer to spend your last days, had you been given the choice? Unfortunately we don't see what happens to the priest, but can only hope the Plague takes him too.

WHY DO I LOVE THIS FILM?

You know, I don't. This is the first time I've ever watched it. I've known of it of course, and seen extracts from it, but never sat down and watched the whole thing, but I wanted to do so for this journal. Now that I have seen it, I can understand its place among the greats of World Cinema, but then I'm not an aficionado of same, and to me it's a really good movie, but I seriously doubt I'd watch it again. For one thing, it's too unremittingly dark, the comedic scenes referred to above notwithstanding. There's no happy ending, no resolution and no real moral in the story, as I already said, other than that Death catches us all in the end. But it's not just that. The ending is very stark, disappointing and even, yes, a litlte scary. At the end, we see Block truly frightened as he realises now he is going to die: there are no more chess games, no more word play, no more extensions. He has done what he wanted to do but he has failed to get the answers he wanted, and as Jons, in typical nihilist fashion, sneers that there is nothing beyond this world, that they are all going forward to darkness and nothingness, it clearly terrifies him. He wants there to be something, he wants God to exist, but no evidence of such has been forthcoming.

Indeed, at the very end of the movie Jof says he sees them all dancing with Death along the hillside in the Danse Macabre, and we can only guess at what truly awaits them in the afterlife. But it's not just that which fuels my kind of disappointment with this movie, compared to how I had imagined it would be. My impression of this film was that it would be mostly - say, eighty to ninety percent - taken up with the chess game between Block and Death, with many deep ruminations and philosophical musings on the nature of God and of Man. But in the event, the chess game is if anything very much secondary to the main plot of the film, and only features in about four scenes in total. This surprises me. I always assumed the movie was built around the game, and it seems this is not the case. I'm not sure why it isn't, when the central premise of the film is the chess game as the knight struggles to best or at least hold off Death in return for his life.

But it certainly gives a good impression of life during the Middle Ages, and especially when shown against the dark, pustulant backdrop of the Black Death. The dialogue is at times very stilted, though this probably comes more through translation than anything else, and the music in the film - not the score, but the songs sung as part of it - are nothing short of annoying. Each actor or actress plays their part well, and one of the best scenes, actorwise, in the movie is the girl accused of being a witch, as she is raised onto the stake and stares ahead with eyes that suddenly seem terrified, and surprised at being so. She gives the impression she expected her master, the Devil, to be there to protect her and now he is not. With one agonised, lost look, this actress, who has only really a bit part in the movie, conveys more than almost all of the other players do. It's powerful, simple and wrenches at your soul.

I'd certainly recommend this film - probably everybody should see it, and don't be put off by the fact that it's subtitled (if you are) as they're handled very well, visible and clear, no looking past someone's shoulder to see what the last word is or anything like that - but I don't see it racing to the top of my favourites list any time soon. Nevertheless, I am glad I got to eventually see it, even if it was not quite what I had expected.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018