2020年经济学人 《第七封印》影评--意愿与恩惠(1)（在线收听）

Books & arts

文艺板块

Home entertainment

家庭娱乐专栏

Pandemic cinema

疫情影院

Will and grace

意愿与恩惠

Ingmar Bergman’s contemplation of plague and death is life-enhancing

英格玛·伯格曼对瘟疫与死亡的思考增益人生。

The inspirationfor one of the most legendary (and parodied) images in world cinema lies a half-hour’s drive north of Stockholm, up near the ceiling of a small medieval church. A fresco shows a ghoulish skeleton and a young man, dressed in a green robe and a brown hat, hovering over a large chessboard. The mural at the Taby church was painted in the 1480s. It came to life nearly five centuries later, when it led Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director, to cast Max von Sydow as Antonius Block, a troubled knight, and to pit him against Death in a chess match.

世界电影史上最具传奇色彩（也是戏仿）的一张影像的灵感，来源于一座中世纪小教堂的穹顶壁画，这座小教堂在斯德哥尔摩以北半小时车程。在这幅壁画中，有一具可怕的骷髅和一个身穿绿色长袍、头戴棕色帽子的年轻人，他们正在一个大棋盘上下棋周旋。塔比教堂的这幅壁画创作于15世纪80年代。在接近5个世纪之后，这幅壁画才变得活跃起来，当时瑞典导演英格玛·伯格曼执导了一部影片，马克斯·冯·西在其中担任主演，饰演一位麻烦重重的骑士安东尼乌斯·布洛克，电影讲述了他与死神摆下一盘生死棋局的故事。

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Death is everywhere in Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal”. It rages in the Holy Land, where Block and his squire Jons have spent years as Crusaders, and back home in Sweden, where the bubonic plague has started to spread. Before it takes him, Block wants to understand whether his life has made any sense, and what might await in the hereafter. To do so he needs time, and to have time he needs to play for it.

在伯格曼导演的《第七封印》中，死亡无处不在。布洛克和他的随从作为十字军，在圣地征战多年，在那里，死亡肆虐，之后他们返回家乡瑞典，而黑死病开始在瑞典蔓延。在死神夺走布洛克的性命之前，他很想搞明白自己的生命是否有意义，以及未来会发生什么。为了弄清楚这一切，他需要时间，在拥有时间的同时，还需要为之努力。

Between the chess game to which Block challenges the grim reaper, the ethereal expression fixed on his face throughout the film, and the backdrop of disease, “The Seventh Seal” can seem unbearably heavy, especially during today’s pandemic. Block cannot come to terms with God’s silence. He yearns to have faith in faith, and not in the facile kind either. He scoffs at the monks who claim that the plague is divine punishment, and pities the penitent zealots, with their crosses and relics, whipping themselves senseless with scourges.

在这场对弈中，布洛克挑战冷酷的死神，影片中他脸上的表情虚无缥缈，再搭配黑死病的背景，让《第七封印》这部电影十分压抑，让人不堪忍受，特别是针对现在的疫情期间。布洛克无法接受上帝的沉默。他渴望笃信信仰，而不是轻率地相信。他嘲笑那些声称文艺是神罚的僧侣，怜悯那些忏悔狂热者，他们拿着十字架和生物，用鞭子抽打自己却毫无知觉。