It is a little hard to believe that July is over! The summer is fleeing fast away. Last night we had our movie date with Tom and Nancy Ragle. This is something we do now and then. I was asked to suggest the movie, and I chose Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. It is a film I saw back in the late 1950s, when it first came out, and at the time, I felt it changed my life. It was unlike any movie I had ever seen. It is basically about death. A knight (played by Max van Sydow) and his squire return from the Crusades at a time when the Black Plague is rampant. People are dying everywhere, and there is fear everywhere. A black-robed figure who announces himself as "Death" challenges the knight to a game of chess. If Death wins, the knight dies. If the knight wins, he lives (for now). Around the central figures of Death and the Knight are a host of others who variously confront the reality of death: an innocent juggler, his wife and toddler son, a haunting young girl who is being burned alive as a witch, a caravan of self-flagellating priests, various ordinary folk in a tavern, preachers of the end of the world, etc. A dark film, but a powerful one.
Later:
This evening, Ellen is having supper with her daughter Julie down in Northampton. I am home alone, and I have just done The dishes after fixing my supper and doing my exercises. Now I’m going to tidy up my study area, which has suffered from hurried changes of clothes and shifts in activity. I guess you could call it an average evening at home.
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