Yeah! Let’s take the summer off!
Time to dust off the VHS tape, DVD, or find a streaming site for Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal”... the film classic self-help guide to playing chess with death.
“The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set in Sweden during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death, who has come to take his life.”
“Bergman developed the film from his own play Wood Painting. The title refers to a passage from the Book of Revelation, used both at the very start of the film, and again towards the end, beginning with the words “And when the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour”.[Rev. 8:1”
And if that’s not dark enough, read about the Swedish tax authority’s persecution of Bergman for alleged tax evasion.
from NYT:
....‘Everyone Must Be Equal’
Mr. Schein said: “There’s something very Swedish about this whole case. The idea of people saying you can’t get away with anything because you are something.’ We call it the royal Swedish envy,’ and its 400 years old.”
He added: “One of the reasons Swedish equality is so advanced is that the motive behind it is not just socialism, but an active dislike of people who are supposed to be better. You have to cut people down. Everyone must be equal. Make someone who’s exceptional feel unexceptional.”
“We are a nation of intense social and moral pressures,” he said: “Social pressure and social conformity explains the stability of the system. But if you are difficult or different in Sweden it’s very hard, and Ingmar has made himself too different....”