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The Seventh Seal | Feb 01 2003

In Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, which I recently watched again after many years, a medieval knight played by Max Von Sydow challenges Death to a game of chess so that Death, who has come to take him, won’t take him just yet, or at least not so quickly. When Death agrees to play, the knight places two chess pieces behind his back, one white, one black, then holds out his closed hands for Death to select one, which he does, choosing the black piece.

“You drew black,” says the knight.

“It becomes me,” says Death.

Writing this, Death’s line sounds kind of dumb, but actually it’s great, in part because the actor who plays Death says it with this knowing smile, the very smile you imagine Death using to underline such witticisms.

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To find the photo above of Death and the knight, I went to Google Images and typed seventh seal death. Twelve images appeared as a result. Ten were from the film. Another was a collage of birds and hands. The last was of a woman’s ass. I clicked on the ass.

The resulting page begins with words The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde inseglet) in large white letters, followed by the aforementioned ass (it’s actually a bit more than an ass, for you can also see the woman’s hands, as well as the top of her jeans, which she appears to be pushing down, or perhaps pulling up, although one imagines she’s pushing them down, the act of uncovering being sexier than the act of covering). The photo is large: 335 by 227 pixels, or about 4 1/2 by 3 inches. Also the woman’s ass appears to be wet, possibly due to some kind of oil but more likely water given the way the substance forms into little drops near the bottom of each cheek and also because of the stain, which looks like a water stain to me, along the top part of the woman’s jeans, the part just under but still touching her left cheek.

Below the ass are snippets of dialogue from the film, presented in colored boxes. These are well-chosen. It’s a dark film, dark but oddly uplifting, and the quotes reflect this.

That’s it: a title, a woman’s ass, snippets of dialogue.