Our crusade was so stupid that only an idealist could have thought it up.

The Seventh Seal (1957).

Being a monumental hypochondriac whose beliefs amble somewhere in-between agnosticism and atheism, i was always apprehensive of seeking out Ingmar Bergman's work, fearing the master of bleakness and existentialism would leave me with more questions than answers. 3000 Woody Allen interviews later (Woody being a Bergman aficionado), i'm so glad I did. If the grueling content of his films isn't for you, then at least watch a couple on mute and appreciate their heart-melting cinematography.

Bergman's chef d-oeuvre, The Seventh Seal, is quite simply breathtaking and is actually far more accessible than you might think. I can't really do the film justice on this blog as i've made a point of keeping my entries concise, but it basically deals with a game of chess between a symbolic death figure and a returning knight, where the outcome of the game determines the knights life (the whole thing basically being an allegory with regards to the meaning of life, death and existence). There was a great line that Time magazine's Richard Corliss once came out with when talking about the film - "There were a lot of young people in the '50s who saw Bergman's films — usually it was The Seventh Seal — and were overwhelmed with an almost religious conversion. And the doctrine of this religion was that film was an art." I always liked that, as it shows how affecting the film can be as an aesthetically as well as ideologically.