(by Sundar)
Streaming on Netflix and consisting of seven episodes, each with a runtime of about an hour, The Queen’s Gambit could be termed as a coming of age drama of an orphaned girl who is a chess prodigy. Based on a novel by Walter Tevis, The Queen’s Gambit happens in the cold war years when the race between the USA and Russia spilled over to chess boards. (From Russia with love, anyone?) Set in the US, Elizabeth Harmon, orphaned after an road accident, gets admitted to an small town orphanage, where she is drawn to the game of chess. After much pestering, the genial old janitor, Shaibel agrees to teach her the game. And it does not take much time for Shaibel to realise ‘Beth’ is a chess prodigy, a sheer genius. The story unfolds over the next ten years or so of Beth’s life – her adopted home, her brilliance in the game, her troubles with relationship, her struggle with her own self and her meteoric rise in the sport that culminates in the world championship showdown in Moscow.
Screenwriting for a character who is a genius in any field is expected to follow a template. Like, the onscreen geniuses are supposed to be eccentrics, mostly loners, persons who lack normal empathy and above all, men and women who cannot handle failures in their fields. Maybe that is the reality too. The writers of The Queen’s Gambit have used the same mould without any major deviations. An easy parallel could be drawn between the onscreen Sherlock Holmes, the genius investigator (Sherlock, played by Benedict Cumberbatch) and Elizabeth Harmon. You have Mrs.Hudson and Dr.Watson here too, but just that they are in different forms. But, while the characterisation per se does not break any new ground, the decision of the creators – of placing a girl-lady at the centre of a board game that symbolises human intellect and is still dominated by men – is simply brilliant, simply smart and more importantly, is not an easy one to make. Beth stands out, dazzles.
Anya Taylor-Joy, as the grownup Beth, has not just breathed life and soul into the character but she has actually carried the entire series on her shoulders. Even within the limited bandwidth of emotions she is required to display, drawing from her hitherto unexplored resources as an actor, Taylor-Joy has given such a nuanced performance. Taylor-Joy has convincingly portrayed Beth, the super gifted chess player, as someone who oozes super cool confidence while at the same time as someone who tries hard to conceal her vulnerabilities. Not very often female actors get an opportunity to play such big roles; Taylor-Joy has made full use of the chance handed out to her. She is here to stay.
Taylor-Joy has been supported exceedingly well by Bill Camp, Moses Ingram, Marielle Heller, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and others, who play the roles of Beth’s coaches, confidants, companions and competitors in the dramatic life of the prodigy.
Irrespective of the hardships and complexities, it is comparatively easier to shoot sports like racing or boxing. It is due to the mere fact that the very nature of these sports, packed with exciting action and a boisterous bunch of spectators, allows the audience to get connected with them easily. But with a game like chess in which the movement of the players is restricted mainly to their right hands coming up once a while, and where the spectators are expected to maintain pin-drop silence, it is indeed a tough task to create riveting visuals. Editor Michelle Tesoro and cinematographer Steven Meizler, getting solid support from composer Carlos Rafael Rivera, have worked wonders with their innovative shots and cuts. We are drawn into the game fully and there is never a moment of dullness. The high point being the presentation of the U.S. Championship tournament (Episode 5, Fork). It is such a beautiful and intelligent work.
What is the gold standard for an outstanding creation? The long and short of it is: None. But one of the metrics could be the way in which the creator spins a riveting tale out of normal ingredients – just like a magician pulling out cute bunnies out of a boring black hat right in front of your eyes in broad daylight. The sport of chess definitely does not belong to the league of attractive regulars like athletics or soccer, or for that matter even golf where one gets to at least see meticulously maintained landscapes dotted with fancy ponds, roving buggies and so on. And in the world of streaming platforms ruled by macho men in the form of gangsters, cops and kings, an orphaned girl as the central lead did not stand any chance – or at least that is what is presumed. But in The Queen’s Gambit, out of the boring black hat of chess boards and a lady as the lead, the creators Allan Scott and Scott Frank have pulled out something truly remarkable. Checkmated!
Jayram
November 10, 2020
Nicely written, Sundar! I’ve been watching the series too and it’s gripping. 2 more episodes to go!
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krishikari
November 10, 2020
Absolutely agree, this was an outstanding mini series. Had me hooked from reading the blurb to the end credits. What I liked almost more than the story, acting, characterization et all, was how how good this looked on screen. The art direction of each location, the period detailing and the fashion was beyond everything else. Just the balcony railings alone of the fifties and sixties have never looked so hot.
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tonks
November 11, 2020
What is the gold standard for an outstanding creation? The long and short of it is: None. But one of the metrics could be the way in which the creator spins a riveting tale out of normal ingredients
Well said. Outstanding is right. Everything in this series is perfect : the lead, her acting, her evolution from a frumpy kid to a chic prima Donna, her angst, her genius. The director could beautifully show chess to be the gripping, exciting, suspenseful sport it actually is : not a mean feat, when chess is dismissed by the ignorant as a boring, intellectual sport. So much that I realised how much I had liked it when a kid, and I’ve downloaded this great app called lichess and have started playing again when I have some free time.
I’m glad you wrote this review : this was one of my best watches in recent times.
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Kaveri
November 11, 2020
The concept of a girl being a chess genius and winning against odds at a time only men played the game – sounded awesome. I was imagining something along the lines of Queen of Katwe. But ofcourse, Netflix had to put the dark drug angle in this show as well. And that was enough to put me off after the first episode.
I am just not up for dark, mafia, druglords, terrorism, murder kinda “entertainment” right now. And OTT platforms seem to specialize in it.
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krishikari
November 11, 2020
@kaveri yes they do indeed. In this case, I felt it was well done and natural worth giving another try, really. I think they feel they need to make the characters very flawed or complex to up the stakes. In detective series I always groan when the hard bitten, twice fired, divorced white aging male opens up his hip flask. 🙂
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tonks
November 12, 2020
True, but it ups the angst, provides drama. It was disturbing to see, but would the series have been less dramatic without that trope? Yes, I think.
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Madan
November 13, 2020
Wonderfully written Sundar. Yes indeed, we don’t know what the gold standard for an outstanding series is but if we could put a finger on what it would like, you can’t go too wrong with Queen’s Gambit. The screenplay, the staging, the cinematography, the dialogue writing, everything is perfect.
Kaveri: As somebody who is definitely not on the crime beat, so to speak, and even before the pandemic didn’t touch Sacred Games or Mirzapur (and gave up on Peaky Blinders after one season during the lockdown), I would suggest you give this a try because the series doesn’t go all in on the drugs. It’s there, but it’s not the point of the series.
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Madan
November 14, 2020
It is interesting to see that mainstream publications have given mildly, tentatively favourable reviews for this one while imdb is going bonkers over it as we are.
Two possibilities: One, critics are so afraid of being seen as endorsing prestige TV that might one day be labelled pretentious that they are over-correcting. On point, the Ebert review was a lot more favourable and their reviewers seem to veer closer to a film/TV buff’s take.
The other, and this suggests itself as one review cynically concluded the series to be little more than a fuck yeah America in the end, is critics are overly suspicious today of cold war tropes or have simply forgotten enough about that period to view such contrasts with hostility. In which case, they missed the point of the final scene where Beth breaks free from her escort and goes off to play chess with the admiring locals. The point was that while chess, like other sports, is played out on a nationalist theater, the love for the sport actually transcends such differences. And also that she received more appreciation in Russia, the Mecca of chess, than in her home country. But yeah, still it’s all just fuck yeah America. Whatever.
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Rahul
November 14, 2020
I came to know of this series from one of my 3 favorite youtube channels
https://www.youtube.com/user/AGADMATOR
He has 830 K subscribers and each one of his videos gets thousands of views.
Many of the super GMs , the foremost among them being the dashing American Hikaru Nakamura, often get on livestreams playing with amateur popular internet personalities. I think at this time, the popularity of chess is at an all time high and so this series has come at the right time, and is reaping the benefit of it.
Kasparov himself assisted with the chess scenes and the selection of games.
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Madan
November 14, 2020
Very nice interview. I loved that sequence where she sledged the Russian boy wiz too. And it was improvised as per the interview.
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Karthik
November 15, 2020
Thanks, Sundar, for writing this!
But in The Queen’s Gambit, out of the boring black hat of chess boards and a lady as the lead, the creators Allan Scott and Scott Frank have pulled out something truly remarkable.
Very well put!
This show is an example of how you can breathe new life into the old cliche of a troubled genius through exquisite period detailing, seductive storytelling and classy understated performances, none more than Anya-Taylor who manages to find impressive variations playing the low note registers of a mostly closed character, almost paralleling the impressive variations her character finds to play on the 8×8 chessboard. The show, to me at least, felt like a meditative study of addiction with a chess prodigy as a lens, and the two come together with some really organic writing. It starts right off the bat when Beth first uses a substance to escape the rule constrained reality imposed in the orphanage and it leads her to the game of chess where winning is a release from the rule constrained game. I found it interesting that its the drug that leads her to discover her chess prowess and puts her on a path to become a prodigy, and not the other way round. The high from a substance is continually paralleled with the high from winning. Even the portrayal of chess games get increasingly intoxicating, as she grows deeper into her addiction. The two instances of her repeated rapid chess games are a great example of what people say about addiction, that it could be fueled by pleasure seeking as well as by the need to avoid pain. In one instance of the rapid games with Benny, she is unable to stop playing despite losing every single game. In the second instance, when she plays simultaneous rapid games, again she is unable to stop despite winning every time.
Its also wonderfully understated in dealing with the social issues of the time. There’s a beautiful scene in Benny’s basement apartment, when his friends visit. The boys huddle around the chessboard, the girl goes to get drinks, and almost instinctively, Beth says “I guess I’ll go fix dinner”. In another beautiful scene, we have two women on different sides of the social spectrum, one bound by the “institutions” of marriage and motherhood, and the other self made, free of all shackles, but when they meet, they’re both carrying hidden bags of liquor and the invisible baggage of loneliness.
I liked that the show doesn’t quite stick to a single tone, and runs the gamut from its Dickensian origins, a meditative look at loneliness contrasting the kinetic visuals of the chess games, altogether with its fairytale ending. I could have lived without the Notting Hill arc and wished for more of the Jolene character beyond her Black savior cameo, but those are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent show.
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Madan
November 15, 2020
This show keeps churning out quality content about the show itself. This discussion moderated by none other than Jodie Foster was brilliant.
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Karthik
November 15, 2020
In detective series I always groan when the hard bitten, twice fired, divorced white aging male opens up his hip flask. 🙂
😆 😆 😆
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Madan
December 13, 2020
Wrote this for FC about the same series but a different perspective (as in, not a review of the series):
https://www.filmcompanion.in/readers-articles/the-queens-gambit-netflix-the-dark-side-of-precociousness-anya-taylor-joy/
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Madan
December 13, 2020
They snipped out my reference to the Grammys 1986 performance of Saving All My Love by Whitney Houston that I had included in the article and which I referred to when I talked about her being already perfect at the age of 22. Just mentioning that here and also linking the performance because that part of the article is a little puzzling to read without that context.
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Jayram
December 13, 2020
Lovely writeup, Madan. Hope you’re feeling much better.
My dad was very disappointed when he discovered Beth wasn’t a real person and kind of tuned out of the show towards the end. But as you rightly said, it’s the journey and quest that matters and my mom and I were totally compelled by it.
I hope Anya Taylor-Joy is not typecast and continues to improve her craft and expand her range.
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Madan
December 14, 2020
Jayram: Thanks. Yes. Resuming work from home this week, taking it step by step.
I can relate to that. Beth is etched so well both by the director, presumably the original novelist too and Anya Taylor-Joy that it is very disappointing to know there was no such female grandmaster from the US.
Luckily, ATJ is coming through at a time when streaming and cinema both offer a variety of interesting roles to actresses and no longer treat the young ones in particular as mere eye candy. So there are certainly lots of possibilities ahead and as long as her feet remain firmly grounded, she’s going to fly.
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