TOWARDS RENAISSANCE?

This Bergman's essay-like film represents the dark Middle Ages and people who struggle the ignorance, the void, the plague of that time. The movie is based on a contrast between death and life. The contrast between fear and happiness, between flagellants and artists. Between people who blindly believe and people who want to know. 

The existential questions asked in this movie are presented directly and the symbolism is quite obvious. The main character, the knight Antonius Block, is asking questions and stating his thoughts directly through monologues or dialogues with Death while his chess game with Death itself depicts a human struggle to live and to achieve the meaning of life.

The philosophy of the movie is introduced in Block's confession. He wants to know, he cannot believe. He believes that people created god out of fear, but he wants to experience him with his senses. 

“To believe is to suffer. It is like loving someone in the dark who never answers.”

Although the title of the movie refers to the last chapter of the Bible, the Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse, I believe that the end of the movie does not indicate death. It displays what is still left to live. And although Antonius Block dies, he helped the happy family to stay alive which leaves us with optimistic thoughts of leaving the Middle Ages and entering the Renaissance, the time of the human, of art, of knowledge, of life.

“I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge.”