By John Sanidopoulos
It
was 1988. I was twelve years old. My aunt was babysitting my older two
sisters and I and she decided to take us to the movies. There were no
good PG rated movies my aunt wanted to see, but then she saw a movie
was starring Demi Moore that she did really want to see, however it was
rated R. My aunt asked me if I wanted to see it, but I was nervous to
see a rated R horror movie, as I was easily frightened by horror films
as a child, and this would also be the very first rated R movie I would
ever see in a theater. I gave in, half excited and half nervous. The
movie we were going to watch was called The Seventh Seal.
The
title and plot reference the seven seals described in the Book of
Revelation, the final book of the New Testament of the Bible. Around the
world, unusual phenomena are occurring that bear resemblance to signs
of the biblical apocalypse; these include a mass death of sea life in
Haiti and a devastating freeze in the Middle East, and at each of these
locations, a mysterious traveler (Jürgen Prochnow) opens a sealed
envelope just prior to the event taking place. The Vatican tasks Father
Lucci (Peter Friedman) with investigating these events, though Lucci
advises that they are all either hoaxes or have other explanations.
Concurrently
to this, Abby Quinn (Demi Moore), a pregnant woman living in
California, prepares for the birth of her child. Her husband, Russell
(Michael Biehn), is a defense lawyer. In order to raise additional money
for when their child is born, Abby and Russell rent a room to the
mysterious traveler, who identifies himself with the name David Bannon.
Soon thereafter, the usually hopeless Abby begins to have terrible
nightmares of a man resembling Bannon being struck down by a soldier,
who then demands "would you die for him?" It becomes apparent that
"David Bannon" is actually the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Abby's
nightmares are visions of his original crucifixion, and she is the
reincarnation of Seraphia, the woman who offered Jesus water prior to
his death only to be turned away by Cartaphilus, Pilate's porter who
struck Jesus. All these things take place as events of the apocalypse
are unfolding.
I
won't spoil the ending, but I did want to capture the weirdness of the
movie, which truly has some scary imagery, at least to a twelve year
old. What struck me however was that throughout the movie there were
quotes from the Bible, which I was very much interested in and it became
my focus during the movie, making me wonder also how much of it was
true. And as they gave off biblical references, I tried to memorize them
so I can go home and look them up.
Now
even though I was only twelve years old, I was somewhat familiar with
the main stories of the Bible, having read a children's Bible when I was
younger that my grandmother from Greece had given me and being an avid
watcher of the anime series Superbook, as well as other ways, but
what was presented in this movie about the Bible was to me on a whole
other level, and it had me looking into the Book of Revelation and the
Old Testament Prophets. But a children's Bible couldn't help me, so for
the first time in my life I went and stole my sister's (unused) red-leather-bound
King James Bible (this was the first time I opened up a real Bible),
and I began to look up all the references I could remember. I was
shocked and amazed that the underlying story about the end of the world
presented in the movie had a basis in fact, but I found it very
difficult to understand. In my desire to understand it, I began studying
the Bible for the first time that day, and I haven't stopped since
then.
