When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Not only highly impressive but thought-provoking, relevant and intensely moving in our present, nervous, times.
– Wally Hammond,
Time Out,
9 Feb 2006
rotten:
It survives today only as an unusually pure example of a typical 50s art-film strategy: the attempt to make the most modern and most popular of art forms acceptable to the intelligentsia by forcing it into an arcane, antique mold.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
30 Jul 2007
fresh:
Its view of a seemingly godless landscape in the grip of plague is still bold and frightening.
– John Monaghan,
Detroit Free Press,
7 Dec 2007
fresh:
Film has superior technical narrative, impressive lensing and thesping.
– Variety Staff,
Variety,
26 Mar 2009
fresh:
Bergman's visually striking medieval morality play [was] the work that gained him an international reputation.