Antonius Block (von Sydow), a knight, returns with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) from the Crusades and finds that his home country is ravaged by the plague. To his dismay, he discovers that Death (Bengt Ekerot) has come for him too. In order to buy time he challenges Death to a chess match, which allows him to reach his home and be reunited with his wife after ten years away. According to film historian Gerald Mast, Blok challenges Death to a game of chess, knowing the inevitable result but obviously playing for time. The knight's faith is war-weathered, and this theme is stressed in one of the scenes in the movie: the knight gives confession to a priest about his doubts whether God actually exists, he tells the priest how he challenged death to a game of chess and reveals his strategy, only to find that the "priest" is actually Death. The movie has very Kierkegaardian themes on death and meaning (see Kierkegaard on despair) and thus it is quite existential. In another powerful scene of a witch burning, the knight is asked by his squire whether he sees in the victim's eyes God or a vacancy. The disquieted knight refuses to acknowledge the victim's and, in a way, his own emptiness despite his doubts about God. The knight realises that he would rather be broken in faith, constantly suffering doubt, than recognise a life without meaning.
Like the gravedigger in Hamlet, the Squire (...) treats death as a bitter and hopeless joke. Since we all play chess with death, and since we all must suffer through that hopeless joke, the only question about the game is how long it will last and how well we will play it. To play it well, to live, is to love and not to hate the body and the mortal as the Church urges in Bergman's metaphor. - Gerald Mast A Short History of the Movies. p.405
During the fateful journey they encounter several features of medieval society and the way it dealt with the fear of death: penitence of flagellators, the burning of a witch and travelling actors. Bergman is particularly critical in his depiction of the clergymen, who profit from the atmosphere of terror engendered by the plague. They offer no spiritual comfort to their people, and are represented as little better than thieves. The 'witch' is burnt at the stake for 'having caused' the plague, in community's grotesque effort to put an end to the contagion (Livingston 1982: 61). The witch burning and the painful ritual that Jof is subjected to at the inn, can be viewed as archaic rituals which aim at the purification of the community through sacrifice; violence is used to stabilise the order.(op cit, 62)
Bergman contrasts the despairing unbelief of the knight and the bitterness of his squire with the simple spiritual faith of the acrobat player Jof (Nils Poppe) and his young wife Mia (Bibi Andersson), who, together with their infant son Mikael, may be symbolic of the Holy family. The squire (Gunnar Björnstrand), while forcefully atheistic and cynical, displays a sensitivity which drives him to protect and aid those he can, and sympathize with those (like the witch) he cannot. Bergman has been suggested to identify most closely with this character.
Although the knight tells his squire that he is going to defeat the Death by a combination of the knight and the bishop, he will eventually still lose. But the knight achieves the significant act which gives his life meaning, by enabling the escape of the young couple and their child. While the knight and his followers are led away over the hills in a medieval dance of death, the young family live to continue their journey.
