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B & A Film Analysis

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Imagine that two men, ragged and exhausted, have found their way onto a cold shoreline and collapse. Having witnessed death and feeling like death, they had finally returned home. These two men had just returned from the Crusades, where they had initially acted out of their religious idealism and returned with that idealism destroyed. The viewer cannot say for sure what these two men had witnessed, or what they had done, all in the name of God. All that can be established from these opening, dialogue free scenes is that both men have returned damaged men, men who have seemingly lost some sort of will, and most possibly some sort of faith. These men have arrived home, but their home has now been hit by fear and disease.
These are the first two …show more content…

The first scenes presented featuring either of these characters, who we later learn go by the names Antonius Block and Jöns, set the tone for what type of character they would remain to be throughout the film. The first man, Antonius Block, the knight, is seen praying; yet his prayer feels shallow and blocked, as is he is failing to feel that his prayer was heard. The second man, …show more content…

“A” is the aesthetic, the self-absorbed individual, while “B” is the ethical, the individual who is part of the universal, which is held as an absolute. From the depictions of the two characters from Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet, it is no stretch to see them as representations of Kierkegaard’s “A” and “B”.
While these two characters can be synonymous with Kierkegaard’s “A” and “B”, the very idea that they are currently “A” and “B” as understood through Either/Or is nonsense. By looking at Kierkegaard’s “A” and “B” from Either/Or through the lens of the characters of Antonius Block and his squire, Jöns, from Ingmar Bergman’s Det sjunde inseglet (with Jöns representing “A” and Antonius Block representing “B” respectively) a new understanding of “A” and “B” can be determined, as both characters represent not “A” and “B” as written in Either/Or, but they represent a broken “A” and a broken “B”. These new understandings of Kierkegaard’s “A” and “B” through Bergman’s film will come to light through the analysis of Bergman’s characters as “A” and “B”, siphoned through theme of death as depicted in Bergman’s Det sjunde

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