Hope and Despair:
The idea of religion usually represents hope, and despair creeps in when one loses faith. This movie is a journey of Antonius slowly losing grip to his faith influenced by both inside and outside forces, including personal doubt, peer opinions and the dreadful circumstance in his world. This is his journey from hope to despair.
The movie started by Antonius waking up by the beach and meeting the human embodiment of death for the first time. Through his facial expression and tone of voice, Antonius showed confidence and told death that “my body is ready (to die), but not myself”. Facing such a supposedly powerful and horrific figure, he was at ease and rejected death, then dared to challenge him for a game of chess to buy time. He ended up winning the game and continued his trip back home from the crusade with his squire Jöns. Antonius’s calmness and strong will to live expressed how much of a faithful, hopeful man he still was at this point.
As the story progressed, they discovered how severe the black plague was in their country, people were suffering and dying, despair is floating around the air. This is when Antonius’s doubts in faith first surfaced and directly displayed through dialogue during the church scene. Antonius accidentally confessed his doubt to death behind the grid, “Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one’s sense? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe but cannot?”, it was obvious that the man is in denial of his growing disbelief and stuck in cycles of doubt and guilt, which I imagine would be a reflection of Ingmar Bergman's struggle in Christianity before he formally transformed to an atheist. This was the second time death has confronted Antonius, although he did stress that he wants to die, he still refused and remained hopeful in searching for the one meaning in life before death.
There are only two relatively hopeful occasions in his journey, one was meeting Jof and Mia, the touring acrobat couple and their baby Mikael, which has fulfilled Antonius’s search for meaning. This generous couple shared wild strawberries and fresh milk with Antonius, Jof and his girl in their first encounter on the grass field. Having a wholesome picnic under the warm sunlight like the world is not on fire, peaceful music play by Jof, talking about his wife, all of Antonius's worries are insignificant at this defining moment. “I will remember this moment, the stillness at the dusk, the bowl of wild strawberry, of milk. Your faces in the evening light, Mikael lying asleep, Jof with his lute, I will try to remember what we've spoke of. And I will carry this memory between my hands, as carefully as if it were a bowl brimming with freshly milked milk. And this will be a sign of me, and greatly fulfilling." Although he did later on beat Death again at chess, he has already achieved his final wish and the journey keeps on going with the family joining the crew. The other hopeful occasion was when death hinted to Antonius that he will bring harm to the acrobat family in their last game of chess, Antonius led the family to successfully escape by letting Jof witness death in Antonius and death's third game of chess in his vision.
The young witch and Jöns are two of the defining roles in adding despair and striking Antonius’s shaken faith. While resting in a village on their way home, they met a young girl who was punished and burnt alive after being accused as the witch who causes the Black Death. Antonius Had a brief conversation with her before the burning, “They said you worked for devil. I also want to meet the devil and ask him about god. He must know, he if anyone”. On the desperate end of beliefs, the girl believed that demon is with her everywhere and could protect her from the harm of fire, which is realistically impossible. She also believed that the devil can be reached by looking into her eyes, but all Antonius can see in them are rigid fear. Being out of his calm character, Antonius was unusually aggressive and frustrated when he couldn’t reach god though the girl. Her burning led into an emotional meltdown and he is spiralling into despair.
As they stare at the petrified girl being burnt on the stake, Jöns as the embodiment of Antonius’s disbelief and despair verbally delivered Antonius’s doubts, “Who do you think is going to take care of this child when she dies? Is it God or Angel or Satan or just emptiness? It’s emptiness. Our fears and hers are the same” while Antonius cries in pain and denial. Witnessing the death of a child and experiencing the same level of despair as other atheists of the group, I’d assume that he’d probably secretly agree with Jöns at this point, but with the potential existential crisis that will come along with the suspension of beliefs, Antonius has no comeback to Jöns’s argument besides the denial his little remaining faith has endued.
At the near end of the movie, we see Antonius’s wife reading the revelation 8:1-11 in the Bible during the dinner. The verses are the apocalyptic implication in the verses also hinted the death of those characters in the movie, making the scene their last supper, which is another bible reference. As the most religious man of all, Antonius was ironically the most frightened one out of the whole crew of atheists when death eventually came upon everyone. He was praying in a trembling voice with both hands covering his face, facing away from death unlike everyone else, “In our darkness we call out to you, Lord. Oh God, have mercy on us, for we are small, afraid and without knowledge. God, you that exist somewhere, that must exist somewhere, have mercy on us.”, emphasising with use of word must, it was more of a desperate cry for help instead of a hopeful prayer.
At the same time, Jöns was almost mockingly grounding Antonius’s anxiety with his reality in an atheist point of view, “In that darkness where you claim to reside, where we probably all reside, you’ll find no one that listens to your complaint or is moved by your suffering. Dry your tears, mirror your apathy. I had a herb to purge your anxiety over the eternal, now it’s too late. Feel in this final minute of the triumph of rolling your eyes and moving your toes. I will silent, but under protest!”. The scene ended by the girl kneeling and verbally accepting death and the movie ends with Jof seeing visions of death’s dance after escaping death with Mia and Mikael.
Judging by his crippling testimony, it is questionable whether there is still faith in Antonius at the end, but his journey has more likely ended in fear, denial and despair instead of hope, confidence and reassurance like he was at the beginning.