"Death Plays Chess"
by GERARDO MARTINEZ
1.- The Film.
1.1. Synopsis.
1.2. Historical context.
2. The Symbols.
2.1 The ancient secrets of the Tarot.
2.2 The Magician
2.3 The Lovers.
2.5 The Fool.
2.6 The Tower.
3. Conclusions
In
the year 1970, the youth magazine "STEREO," affirmed, in an article
entitled "Meet the Bergmans," that one in every one hundred cinemas
of the
world shows a film made by Bergman at least once a day. The astonishing
discovery, according to the magazine, was that Bergman could seduce the
"present-day" youth towards the interpretation of their dreams,
perceived
through the images and the underlying texts of each one of his characters
and
his films. Guido Arístarco, in his famous huge work on cinema: "the
Break-up
of Reason" says that the success of Bergman's films can only be compared
with
the success of the Beatles, and in the same essay, he also argued that
Bergman had invented an ideologically confused world from the strange and
unusual starting point of blending signs, symbols and dream.
In the year 1957, Bergman combined those three elements in the film "The
Seventh Seal" and placed them in the mouths of his main characters, Death
and
the Knight, creating a pact not only between these characters but also
between the audience and film. Since then this film has been seen, acclaimed,
criticised, studied ad nauseam, parodied and stereotyped in every way and
version possible or impossible to imagine. Criticism and support for
Bergman
took no time in appearing, during and after the film's premiere. Fellini
affirmed that Bergman was a new Minstrel and Poet, while Jean Luc Goddard
stated in an article on the contemporary movie industry, published in
"Cahiers du Cinema", that Bergman was not a prolific writer, and
was "badly
suited to true creativity and an author of plagiarisms". Years later
Bergman
would reply, in his book "Bergman on Bergman," that: "My basic
view of things
is not to have a basic view of things".
The film became, right from its premiere, a "guru's talisman" to
the young
who wanted to find out about Eastern culture, through the eyes of Western
philosophy. A friend of mine told me that in the eighties, when she was
studying philosophy, Bergman's films had left her with the impression of not
knowing anything about the crusades, the Middle Ages and Death from a
religious perspective. Fifteen years later she told me in a oneric letter
that when she saw the film for the second time, she understood that it is
a
trick door that leads to an understanding of the codes of existence and non
existence of Eastern cultures as well as key historical events.
Indeed, the film is many things, which when isolated tell a simple tale of
Death and earthly existence. However when these elements are brought together
they become circular, like the end itself in the last sequence of the film.
Antonius Block, the knight and Jons, his squire, rest, sleeping or
daydreaming, as if, perhaps, in Death, on a stony shore below a grey sky,
which heralds, in the words of the Apocalypse and through a bird, that the
lamb of God has broken "The Seventh Seal". On awakening, Antonius
is visited
by Death, who announces that he has come for him. Antonius, who has just
returned from a Crusade, challenges Death to a game of chess, in order to
gain some time. Death accepts and en route to his home Antonius Block
collides with a group of medieval jesters, a witch about to be sacrificed,
and a maiden and her kidnapper. Antonius goes to a church, where Christians
offer their God human sacrifices, which he questions. After all this, he
finds his wife waiting for him in a locked tower. Death jumps out and gives
him more time, once and then again, to carry on playing, until Antonius
causes the chess table to fall to the ground, and he loses the game and
therefore his life, and the lives of the group that accompanies him. Then
Death takes them, as they dance in a macabre circle.
Some authors, critics and essayists of cinema affirm that it is possible to
interpret or work at many different points in time, which are brought
together as one in the film, just as several different interpretations or
readings can exist within one text. In his essay "The Seventh Seal",
Alan
Stanbrook says that from its premiere to the present, the film has become
a
kind of mirror of the existentialist events of man. Analysed in the sixties,
you could have found the fear of the post war period and the cold war in the
film, while today, according to Stanbrook, one could perceive an end of
century delirium, with AIDS and the globalisation of the macroeconomic world
in the hands of a few companies, that in this case assume the character of
Death, threatening man's "true self".
The
fact is that Ingmar Bergman's film is located at a point in the Middle
Ages which is not strictly defined. We interpret the situation as of two
feudal Knights, the main characters, who are returning from a crusade, but
we
are not told exactly which one. This historical imprecision is perhaps used
by the author with the purpose of dealing with the cyclical concept of the
entire movement of religious struggle from the eleventh to the fourteenth
century, revolving around the same axis.
With reference to events as related by historians, there were four crusades,
beginning with the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the subsequent rise of
the Roman Catholic Church. The first of the crusades brought the European
States together, which had been greatly divided due to wars and small scale
revolutions between lauded states, kings and feudal lords. The concept of
rescuing the holy city of Jerusalem as well as the Kingdom of Constantinople
from Muslim hands was simply a political act of Unification. The second,
third and fourth crusades served solely to bring Islamic and Catholics States
into confrontation.
In the film, Ingmar Bergman deals with the history of the crusades and
their
historical framework - the Middle Ages - to justify a story of "evangelical"
appearance, in which biblical and philosophical elements converge. Behind
these elements lies an esoteric discourse, which can only be discovered
through semantic analysis. Through this image, the author justifies a
mechanism of tricks. Starting from this point, this dissertation suggests
that the paradigms around which the story is constructed and as counted by
The Seventh Seal, form the ancient game of the Tarot and its divinatory
arts.
Now we will look at the opening words of the film - the words of the
Apocalypse.
"The credits - white on black - pass swiftly. The film begins in print.
We
read:
In the middle of the fourteenth century, Antonius Block and his Squire, after
long years as Crusaders in the Holy Land, have at last returned to their
native Sweden, a land ravaged by the Black Plague.
The screen goes black. The music, 'Dies Irae"; begins solemnly. The screen
flashes light - a cloud whitened in an otherwise grey and turbulent sky. The
choir burst out on the cut, a dramatic reworking of the Dies lrae' music.
The
second cut is to a solitary sea eagle hovering almost motionless against that
sky. The third cut is to a barren shoreline; the music is taken out. A quiet
and gentle voice reads from the book of revelations: "and when
the Lamb had
opened the seventh seal there was silence in heaven for the space of half
an
hour. And the seven Angels which had the seven Trumpets prepared themselves
to sound." ("The Seventh Seal". Melvin Bragg. Page 56)
The book of Revelations or the Apocalypse of Saint John, as it is known at
the present time, comes from the interpretation and re-writing of the
biblical schools of Jerusalem and Rome. According to Catholicism these
writings possess the sacred faculty of having two implicit authors, one
earthly and the other divine, coming directly from the word of God; a man
with his message of salvation is revealed to man, in the face of his sins,
in
order that he may walk pure and without moral imperfections into eternal
life.
According to the Catholic Church, the other author, the earthly, translated,
interpreted and added human adherence and inherence.
Two messages converge in the books of the Old and New Testament; two
convergent writings. The first is Temporal: to comfort man with salvation.
The other is Universal, with meaning for all human beings.2
If in addition to this we adhere to the final writings of Saint John,
familiar as the book of the Apocalypse or of Revelations, we simply find a
closure of ecclesiastical scriptures, since it is there that the "Parusia"
occurs, in Greek, the arrival of God, and for the Christian churches the
glorious return of Jesus Christ at the end of time, which takes place,
"according to the revelations of Saint John", after the purification
of souls
at the Final Judgement.
When Saint John composes the revelations and designates the coming of a Final
Judgement, the world is governed by an ideological system that considers
polytheism as the basis of its state, while the incipient and primitive
Christianity first demanded, by proclamation and secret laws, the worship
of
a single God. Implying that the State would in future be impeached through
a
Monotheistic God was inconceivable and, moreover, subversive. For this reason
the books of the Apocalypse, among others, were written in codes and their
reading should be carried out by a constant interpretation of what is implied
between the lines. Also, in line with the historical period in which these
letters are written, they have been composed in the style of a parable and
because of the factors laid down above, until now it was necessary to make
constant use of metaphor.
It is inconceivable at first sight, but that is what Ingmar Bergman does in
this film; he uses metaphor to dissuade, obscure and explain, through the
analysis of a meaningful game of Tarot with the audience.
The
Semiotic researchers Greimas and Pierre Giraud coincided in affirming
that the symbol is born of the idea-thought conjunction and translates life
forms and events, or the mind of the spectator and his sociological and
cultural acts
Symbolism, for specialists in anthropology, is a category that dresses up
the
dimensionality of the human being so that he may understand his environment.
There is a place for everything: magic, humanity, the inconceivable and
therefore the imaginative, the inexplicable and the wonderful. History or
magic will always be dressed up or disguised though symbols, which explain
everything. Symbolism is used in the present day to the point of desperation.
Everything is mythologised through an image and its likeness.
Bergman used these elements when he made his films. The Subject (protagonist
or main character) is always in a terrible dialectic between their Present
and their Past; they are forced to question their existence time and time
again, and reflect on any symbol placed in the context. There are numerous
examples: The teacher remembering a better past in "Wild Strawberries";
the
hysterical wife in "Scenes of a Marriage"; the sisters and the boy
in a
multilingual city in "The Silence" and also the Knight playing chess
with
Death in "The Seventh Seal."
The Tarot and its Major Arcana.
The
cards of the Tarot arrived hidden amongst the skirts of the gypsies, full
of the colours of Indian dyes, or perhaps Persian, or perhaps they were
interpreted by the Hindus from the ancient cards of Chinese wisdom. Their
origin has been lost in oblivion. The Masters of Ancient Egypt were permitted
to believe that the cards of the game had been given directly from the hand
of the God Amon Rá, the good. They insist, to the present day, that the Tarot
as it is known today has six millennia of history.
According to Eliphas Levi, the prolific medieval magician and author,
the
word Tarot comes from the magic intonations of Hindostani "Tar Ro,"
meaning
magic charts. It was introduced by the gypsies that came from India,
who in
turn interpreted them on behalf of the Chinese. Levi declared that its
mysteries came from a cyclical interpretation of the cabalistic tree of life
of the Jewish Tora. Whatever the truth, in medieval and renaissance Europe,
the Tarot gained popularity as one of the more comprehensive forms of
predicting the future of a human being. In 1889, Doctor Gerard Encausse wrote
the book "The Tarot of the Bohemians", in which he stated that although
the
major arcana cards were from Egypt, the minor were simply a combination of
the ancient divination cards of the gypsies, that were and still are being
read by the gypsies of Southern Spain. There he also revealed that, at that
the time, the reading of the Tarot was more wide spread than astrology and
that in their multiple and endless mathematical combinations, they hid the
psychic codes of spiritual and dimensional communication. Years later the
Argentinean writer and philologist Jorge Luis Borges stressed that the Tarot
as read and analysed by Carl Jung and so many other masters is simply
a key
to the transgression of the mirror of the unknown, which he described in this
way because, according to his theories, the occult world reflected our own
and existed in parallel to it.
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In any book of instructions for using the Tarot, you can read that "The
Magician" represents communication between the consultant and his surrounding
context. In the case of the analysed film, the Magician becomes a carefully
constructed game on the part of the director and of the scriptwriter since
the self is the audience, attending the cinema to see the film.
We began with the thesis that the story of "The Seventh Seal" is
a game of
Tarot and on studying the representative variations of the cards in the film,
we cannot doubt that the magician is the crowd which goes to the cinema, as
its characteristics in the game are: the collective's relation-reaction in
union with the consultant or object being consulted, being able to take
decisions about what has been communicated and, lastly, communication between
events and the audience. In a studied viewing the card's description defines
the community of persons or the individual who takes decisions for the group
- the collective.
Bergman uses this from the first instant when the film begins with the words
of the Apocalypse, which bring the writings of the New Testament to a close,
in the last stage of biblical writings where man is in communication with
God. He does this in the active verb and is able to communicate collectively
through signs and symbols, which translate an atavistic and archaic terror
inspired by uncontrollable natural forces. In the words of Carl Jung, this
is
the fear of being collectivised, or the anguish of being an individual in
the
collective, and the fear of leaving a group that alienates you and forces
you
to live a life that isn't yours.
What has been described operates in the film simply as an introduction to
the
semantic knowledge hidden in the entire metalanguage of the film. We should
remember that it is a Christian interpretation of a medieval event seen
through the eyes of a man who has struggled to question what had been
conferred to him as truth. A useful scene to illustrate this paradox is when
Antonius Block is confessed and he says that his heart is empty and without
beliefs, in a world populated by ghosts and fears. He immediately realises
that his confessor is Death, who has persecuted him throughout his travels
until he finds a Church (that in turn represents a place of civilisation).
Indeed, the paradigm of the event is described once again here through the
audience. Antonius Block is the audience, who desires to be discovered
or to
discover its fears and phobias in the arena of social relationships.
In the fifties, when Erich Fromm composed his celebrated essay "The Art
of
Loving", he conceived that there is no more perfect love, or one that
is more
inconceivable, than mystic love. According to him this implied giving
ourselves up to the void and to the fear which that void engenders. The
individual's devotion to God and to all His forms and symbols stems from love.
Humanity has always navigated on the waters of love, whether for biological
or psychological reasons. Human beings have written about love throughout
history. If we had stored up every text or every word written on the subject,
there would not be room on this earth for so much information. Love has been
declared often and explained very little. Nations have been built and have
also been destroyed, wars have been decreed and peace has been restored;
people have been betrayed and lies spoken all in the name of love
The love referred to in this chapter is symbolised by the Lovers, not by a
couple or by dualities, but with a triangle, as represented in the Tarot.
In
the film there are two groups of lovers. One is formed by Jons, the Squire,
Raval and the dumb girl, and the other is by Plog, the blacksmith, his wife
and Jonas Skat, the dancer of the jesters: two triangles, two situations.
The first is formed in fear, beginning with the discovery of a maiden who
has
been raped, abducted (which Bergman will go on describing in his film "The
Virgin Spring") and rescued by the squire from the hands of her abductor.
He
leads her to supposed freedom and her loss of speech ends with the arrival
of
Death.
The second group is formed in lust, and the gross blacksmith and his
flirtatious wife who falls in infantile love with the mime maker are depicted
with comic touches and circus tricks.
The two are imperfect triangles, both physically and morally. They are
"isosceles triangles", which in spite of converging at the corners,
possess
one side bigger than the others.
In readings of the Tarot, the Lovers signify conflicting decisions between
emotion and intelligence, and lust and love. This indicates the division
between earthly subjects and spiritual desires. If the lovers appear in the
upright position, it means that any revelation will arrive in due course.
When reversed the card indicates that a philosophic disintegration in the
individual or consultant exists. Bergman shows both positions; one group will
receive the revelation that love ends with Death (Jons, the mute girl,
Raval), and the other signifies the considered disintegration of humanity
stemming from barbarism (Plog, Plog's wife, Jonas), that is no more than the
Death of knowledge and its collectivisation. Both sets of lovers go with the
Knight to his tower and it is they who with their final words foresee that
Death has locked them in their cycle and that without it they will not
complete it.
The Wheel of Fortune or the Cycle of Life.
In
the great ninth sequence of the film, Antonius Block arrives at a Church
where a painter is drawing a fresco, in which one is able to observe a circle
of people dancing with Death. In spite of this, the circle is illuminated
by
the sun and the stars. The painter tells Block: "they are punishing
themselves for the glory of God" and we immediately see the image of
the
crucified Christ, while Death lurks in wait for him in the confession box.
After the confession of fear and upon leaving the church, a great general
shot shows a supposed witch who is being tortured and prepared to be burnt
at
the stake. She will then be crucified, preceded by a procession of
flagellates, as had appeared in the fresco in the Church. This image of the
witch closes a cycle within the film, the cycle of life, and opens another,
a
second subsequent part of the persecution of the rest of the human race by
plague and Death .
All this representation is an allegory to a cycle of characteristics that
is
never completed in the film, as it is on earth, and perhaps in the universe,
in what we humans consider as life.
The cycle of life is not only represented in the cards of the Tarot but also
throughout the extensive bibliography on Biology, Religion and Philosophy
that has been written in this world, and a comprehensive perspective would
give us the material for one thousand and one dissertations.
The most ancient beliefs that life is an eternal return originate from China
and are lost in their immemorial past, when the priests arranged, as with
the
other ancient civilisations, to offer their finest gifts to the mother earth
in order to receive rewards for their communities.
However the best example of this is found in the history of the ancient
Egyptians, who annually opened up the bed of the river Nile to irrigate their
crops and then participated in a witches' Sabbath of offerings in order to
perpetuate their kind and their crops. In these, according to them, lay the
roots of their power and their Kingdom. The cycle of life remains captured
in
the great majority of their icons and hieroglyphics. It is important to
remember that from there, according to historians and anthropologists, came
the cards of the Tarot. Also to be found is a drawing of a phoenix and an
angel who open a great golden wheel in heaven; a sacred sphinx manipulates
the movements of the wheel, while a lion and a winged lamb wait for the snake
of origin to come down from the sky-cycle. The great wheel in turn holds a
series of esoteric symbols.
According to this card, new paths will open up following sacrifice, leading
to a better situation for the individual or society. Sacrifice is therefore
justified, both in cultural and religious terms. This gypsy or Egyptian
vision brings us closer to the vision of Judaeo-Christianity, where we see
Jesus die on the cross to save, cleanse and renew the world of its sins, and
allow it to be reborn ascending to the heavens. Ingmar Bergman reinterprets
this cycle, like the image of Jesus in the cross, when after the mortuary
confession he decides to place a procession of the faithful scarred by the
plague and a supposed "witch", whose sacrifice will save the community
from
the harm which she apparently brought them.
According to many theorists of the cinema, Bergman's films come from a single
point - his fear of his father, who, in his own words, was a Christian and
a
castrator. In the opinion of many critics, his work stems from a desire to
exorcise the paternal figure, through the representation of a Christian God,
that torments and pursues. It is valid to say that in the analysed case the
effect is to represent sacrifice and its effects, and the whole film bears
that paradigm. From beginning to end, Death and life are renewed in each
scene, in a cycle, as in the Tarot: the cycle of life itself.
Bergman took the notion of a story of the medieval era and its minstrels from
the praxis of the theatre. The director gave classes of Theatrical Technique
in the Theatre School of Malmo in 1955, where he put on a collective drama,
full of texts and monologues entitled "A Painting in Wood". In that
performance, according to the collected annotations of Peter Cowie in his
book "Ingmar Bergman," the director discovered that his idea transcended
the
anecdotal and was a socio-historical representation of medieval Europe.
However, what attracted his attention, according to Cowie, was that without
changing many lines the text could be modified slightly and converted into
a
film script.
The film version would be called "The Seventh Seal" and included
the
unaltered texts of Death and the Lancer. According to Cowie the story of the
jesters and their journey through the fields and the town underwent more
transformations. This group has been compared to the Holy Trinity or the
sacred family, which in spite of the hellish plague remain untouched and safe
from harm. For this reason the Virgin Mary and the child God appear in the
Jester's dreams, as well as the dance of Death.
While the film unfolds, this character weaves the same story over and over
again, telling us with his gestures, mimes and performances that what we (the
spectators) see will be understood as truth, because it exists and is
tangible. This is the semantic description of the card of the Fool in the
annals of the Tarot: the verification of what is real, and the discovery of
your own life in the face of uncertainty. He appears hanging from a withered
tree from where he looks at us and laughs. However, in the film there are
two
icons that deliberately represent him: the first is the possessed woman who
is going to be sacrificed, and who wears a necklace of leather around her
neck as if being hanged. But it is the jester with his gesticulations who
introduces us the audience to the bulk of information in the film, even
including his hallowed family in the visionary process of a nearby future.
In this film the author locks the knight's wife in a tower, which is used
as
a fortress against the powers of nature. The tower is also a tribute to the
phallus and masculinity, hiding the female inside.
For the primitive Christians, towers signified the connection between heaven
and earth, and God and the world. Also legends hold it as the origin of all
languages and all cultures. Babel was the genetic pillar where, through
punishment, human beings learned how to be different. It was the tower that
broke the sky and dared to journey to infinity. For Latinos, the tower was
the "Mundis Axis" and because of this every city, town, county and
church
must have a tower, which, according to the ancient theologians, guarded
humanity from Satan's pleasures.
Curiously, the Virgin Mary is represented in an ivory tower and in turn
graces man with the knowledge that the mother of Jesus is descended from King
David (who, among the Christians, is drawn above a tower). Also in the Middle
Ages, and still in popular imagery, Saint Barbara is depicted embracing, or
above a tower where according to legends, her father enclosed her to keep
her
from the touch of evil powers or heavenly forces.
The above-mentioned describes how the Christian religious world presents the
Tower as a pillar, not only of divine wisdom but also as a construction of
purity. In the final sequences of "The Seventh Seal" the characters
are
preserved in the tower, where the only inhabitant that existed was a wife
who
waited for her warring husband. In the annals of the Tarot the tower
indicates presumption and problems with the environment, the context that
surrounds us. Here is the key; the environment surrounding the characters
is
the plague, and it can be supposed that only there will they be safe
and
sound, but the characters' presumption makes them forget their mortal
destiny, and in this Bergman characterises one of the greatest problems of
the human race: existence. This great sequence illustrates Kant's paradigm
of
who we are and where we going.
So much could be said on this topic, without really saying anything; this
biological threshold has never been measured. It is another dimension and
although we grow and develop towards culmination in it, we know nothing about
it. Everything there is to say has been said about it, and many theories
have been speculated, always coming back to the point that we are all born
to
die. Obviously it is the only democratic factor that humans possess, and
still without knowing what it is, we end at that point. For this reason we
fear it. This is the simple motive which has driven us to devise something
beyond Death, composed of judgements, heavens, reigned over by the gods and
hells, dominated by demons. Death has made us feel, since man began to
reason, that there is a higher force, which manifests itself by taking us
to
another world. It is the basic reason for the existence of religions and,
in
fact, for the creation of the "mite" that we all pay upon dying
in order to
be transported to the glory of the gods.
The first icons of Death come from the Neolithic period, when man drew
himself within concentric circles, which for some anthropologists suggest
the
body's fall into the waters, perhaps because this is the funereal form of
the
deceased, as for others it is the entrance of the living organism, once dead,
into infinity.
It is in the Middle Ages when Death assumes the universal icon of the painted
skeleton, according to the Masonic studies that represent it above a compass
and branches of irises. In the case of the analysed film, Death comes dressed
in black, a colour that it in the West signifies respect for the deceased.
Yet if we enter the Islamic world of meanings we find the key, as Death's
costume in "The Seventh Seal" is the veil which covers the prohibited
or,
more specifically, preserves what has not been touched. Virginity can be
stored behind the veil, as well as intimacy, in life or religious terms.
This film contains one of the most important sequences ever conceptualised
in
the film industry, which explains through images and movements the sacred
ritual of "the Dance of Death" 3. This closes the historical cycle
of the
film, but is also used to illustrate this phenomenon so common in the Middle
Ages, which supposes the redemption of the human being before an infinite
power, and it is from this word that its meaning in the Tarot arises; as the
Death card does not signify Death itself as physical-biological fact, but
rather the infinite and the possibilities that it gives the human being of
transcending history in general, or his own history.
This is the most difficult point of every research topic. Truly creating a
hypothesis based on what has been written can result in the destruction of
everything that has gone before. I know through experience and through what
others had recounted that at this stage we all abandon our work for a time
before confronting it; but this point arrives and it is the time to say that
everything that has been stated, was and will be a game in which I enjoyed
participating, and that I felt competent to accurately prove that the
analysed film, watched and studied so many times, fitted the primary
hypothesis that all the elements of the game and the social and esoteric
psychology of the Tarot are brought together in the film.
While I studied and developed this vast chronicle on this great film, I felt
that I was collapsing into my own doubts about a topic that is so distant
and
foreign to my own experience. This is a story that at first seemed as distant
to me as the time itself when the film is set in my analysis. At times I
thought I would sink into an abyss and be shipwrecked amongst so many
documents and writings. The web sites that I used in my research, even had
my
computer's memory confused, but in the end it was all worth it. I was able
to
learn about the peculiar character of the Holy Wars, aptly called "crusades"
in the Middle Ages, and how observing them today they take on that
commonplace air of the epic and romantic adventures popular among ancient
men. I also learned that the creative rule of the film industry is the
invention of the magic of the means of daily human experience.
Once Aristotle said that there were several ways to plan a drama. Those who
craft scripts follow his stipulations to the letter, and even famous
semiologists such as Umberto Eco have not dared to transgress the formulae.
It is there that Bergman universalises his story, as without apparently using
the formulae, he constructs a story on the known fear of Death with the
occult elements of the esoteric manipulation of the Tarot.
The Seventh Seal is a Christian film with glimmers of philosophy, which
attempts to explain and criticise the absurd mentality of the early Christian
church, that unfortunately persists today in the ecclesiastical canons of
the
apostolic Roman Catholic church.
Another incredible fact, and one that I have brought out in this essay, is
the fact that the word Tarot possesses multiple combinations, that form key
words, some religious, in every Western language. Just to quote one example,
we see that in Hebrew, "Tora," means "Law" and also "Door".
In Latin "Rattan"
is "Wheel" and "Orat" is sentence. "Taor" in
ancient Arabic is darkness and
"Ator" is happiness.
The recent gurus of the "New Age" have intensified a new revival
of the Tarot
as one of the doorways leading to the psychological worlds of relaxation or
as Freud would say, to the deep condition of the Tanatos, or what the West
terms as the Death. It is worthwhile to indicate that the analysed film is
a
mythical journey to the primary fear of man, which is the loss of that space
that we have come to possess in earthly dimensions. The cinematographic
contributions of Bergman in this film, in spite of the game suggested are
extremely profound and intimate as are all of the author's creations,
beginning with his vision. Although we insist on seeking out one thousand
meanings, this will always come from the most inner environment. We could
translate them as follows:
a. - The script as the fundamental basis to describe man-Society's
interactions. Man- psyche. Starting from these two paradigms he creates
circles that trap the character and lead him into a constant fight against
his destiny.
b. - The technical and cinematographic alignments and movements exist to
frame the actor's movements.
c. - Editing stems from the necessities and social relationships of the
characters.
d. - To create a myth through an existing mythology.
e. - To recreate a game that uses magic and the occult as a philosophical
story.
So from dream to myth and from this to reality, the steps are unpredictable
and in many cases fantastic and magical. At the end of this research, it
remains to get to this point, and once again, I repeat, my original theory
was reaffirmed. I can then conclude that the cinema is no more than an
artistic platform where technical factors together with the individual dreams
that each creator possesses, and that once on screen, this takes on the life
that the creator him or herself once breathed into it.
London, June 1999
SPANISH
VERSION
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