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The Middle Ages of Antonius and Jons never ended.
In the company of Jons, a skeptical, disillusioned, and pragmatic squire (Gunnar Björnstrand), the knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) has consumed almost all his faith in God during the war. Tired, disenchanted, and annoyed with life, a believer but assailed and tormented by doubt, he returns from the Crusades in the Holy Land. He finds himself in a country (Denmark, between Roskilde and Illerod) where disorder, plague, and religious fanaticism prevail. On a rocky and inhospitable beach, where he spent the night, under a gray sky and near a threatening sea, Death (Bengt Ekerot) appears to him, having followed him for quite some time. It has come to take him away. Block tells it that he is not ready: "My spirit is, but not my body. Give me more time." And just to buy time, he challenges it to a game of chess against him. As the film progresses, a family of jugglers, met on the way home, allows him to savor, perhaps for the last time, a pinch of trust in life. But this unexpected serenity will also lead him to ask further questions about God, religion, life, and death. Antonius Block even engages in a long series of dialogic encounters-clashes with Death during the most incredible itinerant chess game in cinema history. The film, undoubtedly one of Ingmar Bergman's best, deepest, and most symbolically rich, is ultimately a typically Scandinavian allegory of man's life, spent almost uninterruptedly in the feverish search for God, but which has, as its only definitive certainty, only death. As was customary in medieval shows (an example is faithfully reconstructed and presented by the director during the film, through the show of the actor family composed of Jof-Niels Poppe, Mia-Bibi Andersson, and another older actor), the tragic coexists with the comic. The film expresses quite linearly all of man's existential problems. The knight Antonius Block ideally and physically traverses all possible human tragedies: war; plagues; justice; adultery; thievery; oppression; sexual violence; superstition; religious fanaticism; et alia. And he seems to redeem them all with a single ploy: by causing a diversion (he knocks over some chess pieces with a clumsy movement of his cloak), the knight distracts Death and saves the family of jugglers, allowing them to leave his sight. The family: a happy oasis in a cruel world. Very important is one of the opening scenes featuring the entire family of actors, composed of the juggler Jof, his wife Mia (a dazzling debut by Bibi Andersson), their young son, and the head entertainer friend. While speaking to his horse, Jof has a heavenly vision: the Madonna holds the child by the hand, accompanying him as he takes his first steps on the lawn. Jof wakes up his wife Mia, who urges him not to indulge in his usual fantasies. The actor living and working with them also wakes up. The young son, for whom the father predicts a bright future, also wakes up. Mia reaffirms her love for her husband Jof. They are a poor and simple but happy family. And not by chance, they escape Death.
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