In case I wasn't clear enough in the last post, you might really get something from Bergman's movie, "The Seventh Seal." It is entertaining, not just a typically depressing "art" film.
The movie may have a strong impact if you are seduced by analogies, as I am. Several aspects of the Black Death in the 1300's remind a person of what the world is going through today. Of course the casualties were drastically higher back then, but populations were tougher, too.
At any rate, think of how rare it is to watch a film that makes you think about Life, instead of merely titillating you with the usual fluff. This is indeed a rare opportunity to blend Art and Life.
I own the disc, and can't really help on the least expensive way to stream the movie.
The movie may have a strong impact if you are seduced by analogies, as I am. Several aspects of the Black Death in the 1300's remind a person of what the world is going through today. Of course the casualties were drastically higher back then, but populations were tougher, too.
At any rate, think of how rare it is to watch a film that makes you think about Life, instead of merely titillating you with the usual fluff. This is indeed a rare opportunity to blend Art and Life.
I own the disc, and can't really help on the least expensive way to stream the movie.
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Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbgiWPJLSsM
The movie on youtube with subtitles.
I'll watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLVLKQ8Nh_A
Ingmar Bergman interview includes him reflecting on the Seventh Seal.
(About 7 min. in...) "I'm not trying to make it real; I'm trying to make it alive."
(About 8:30 in...) "This universe is not the reality. Reality always makes sabotage to your fantasy, to your dreams. So you have to take details of that reality and put them into your universe. But those details must be absolutely perfect to fit into this little universe and this universe is, of course, very limited, but if it's the right construction of it, it will be a perfect mirror or the reality around you."
The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called ‘‘deep truths,’’ are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.
- Niels Bohr
The Book of Revelations, which the Seventh Seal quote comes from, is full of metaphor, symbolism, archetype, etc. It seems that the first kind of truth referenced above is the literal truth, black and white, good and evil, etc. Christianity for the masses makes its living off this sort of truth.
The second sort of truth referenced above can only be glimpsed through art, metaphor, etc. for it is a truth that would be limited, and consequently inadequately portrayed, if language was its only mode of expression. For this level of truth sees the truth and error in all concepts. I think the following is a quote from Heraclitus but I'm not sure:
Reality is such that within each thing there are two aspects that destroy each other mutually.
Quotes seem to be the most effective way for me to talk. Snippets of wisdom, leaving the reader to fill in the rest from the vast and unspoken part of our sense of knowing.
It is a good movie. Christianity has shaped our thought process for a long time. But I will make one defense of it here. If you go back to the Gnostics, to the NeoPlatonists of the first few centuries A.D., you will find thinking that has not yet been contaminated with institutionalized, power-hungry, politicized Christianity. It seems to be man's destiny that he never knows when to stop. He simply cannot stop thinking that something truly good can always be made better when, in fact, it cannot. He always wants to catch the butterfly but, as soon as he does, it dies.
George
KB, please correct my typo:
it will be a perfect mirror or the reality around you."
should be "of" not "or"
Thanks.
Chris