The Pervasive Crucifix

The film The Seventh Seal (directed by Ingmar Bergman [Janus Films, 1958]) grapples robustly with questions of theodicy. It is set during the Black Plague, with all of the questions and suffering that that time brought. Some people respond to the threat by mocking and clowning around; some people bargain with God or rage at him. But “a pervasive image throughout the film is a shriveled, plague-inflicted Christ depicted on the town’s crucifix. Several times throughout the film, as characters desperately seek answers for the meaning of suffering and the hiddenness of God, this crucifix appears somewhere in the scene” (Rebecca Florence Miller, “The Seventh Seal, the Hiddenness of God, and the Inescapability of Death,” Patheos Evangelical, March 2, 2016, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rebeccaflorencemiller/2016/03/the-seventh-seal-the-hiddenness-of-god-and-the-inescapability-of-death/).