We need heroes who will face death fearlessly and keep their eyes on eternity. In Max von Sydow's roles as an aged oracle, that is what he did.

Max von Sydow has died at the age of 90, the legendary knight of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (1957), who played chess with Death and gave his life eventually to save a child. The film showed we are human because of this desire for eternity, in ourselves as long as we can, and in our children next.

But unless you happen to love Bergman, you probably know von Sydow because of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, or Ridley Scott. The movie legend became a part of Hollywood, a part of our desire to meet legends.

He was the mysterious, vaguely German-sounding doctor dealing with Leonardo DiCaprio in “Shutter Island” (2010), the director of the pre-crime program in “Minority Report” (2002), and Robin of Loxley’s father in “Robin Hood” (2010). He was the father figure in all these movies, a role he first undertook in the days of the action movies as Stallone’s father figure in “Judge Dredd” (1995). He was also the father in Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World” (1991), Dr. Kynes in the wonderful David Lynch “Dune” (1984), and Father Merrin in Billy Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (1973). //

Beyond the more famous movies I’ve already mentioned, let me close with two recommendations for von Sydow admirers: “Steppenwolf,” Fred Haines’ 1974 adaptation of the Hermann Hesse novel, wherein von Sydow plays the protagonist Harry Heller, and “Three Days of the Condor,” the 1975 Sydney Pollack paranoid CIA thriller starring Robert Redford, in which von Sydow is wonderfully villainous as a European assassin with eccentric aristocratic pursuits.