Tag: chess


The Queen’s Gambit

December 20th, 2020 — 12:38am

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
****
The Queen’s Gambit-seven-episode television series on Netflix

All previous reviews in this blog have been movies that originally appeared in the theater. However, during this pandemic, we have been watching a great deal of television and were particularly impressed by this seven-episode series based on a 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis.

Beth Harmon is an 8-year-old orphan who has lost her mother in an auto accident and is living in an orphanage. She encounters a janitor in the basement who is preoccupied studying a chessboard. She convinces him to teach her the game and she turns out to have a terrific aptitude for visualizing the chessboard and becoming an outstanding chess player. She is invited to compete in a local high school chess tournament, which she wins and goes on to the Kentucky State Chess Championship. This leads her to the US Championship and ultimately competing for the World Championship in Russia.

As Ms. Harmon matures, there are boys and young men who become part of her life as do drugs and alcohol. The story seamlessly comes together and captivates the audience.

As well done is the story with the excellent acting, it is the realism that is created in every aspect of the series that is a major part of its success. Whether it is the basement of the orphanage or the grandeur of the world chess tournament in Russia, the audience is completely drawn into the story. The street scenes especially in Europe as well as the local scenes in Kentucky are all magnificently portrayed and reproduced. The well done music background adds to the various moods of the characters and the storyline. As much as this is a story of one amazing person, it also suggests that “it takes a village” as we see how many people come together in support of the main character.

Kudos to Isla Johnston (young Beth), Anya Taylor Joy (Beth as a young woman), and the wonderful cast, which includes Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Harry Melling, Marielle Heller, Bill Camp, and many others. The series was written and directed by Scott Frank who created the series with Allan Scott. They were executive producers along with William Horberg. You may also be interested to learn that various chess experts including former world champion and grandmaster Garry Kasparov were consultants for this wonderful series.

Comment » | 5 Stars, Drama, Sport

Pawn Sacrifice

September 28th, 2015 — 5:58pm

*** Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 11.22.29 AM     

Pawn Sacrifice -rm

This is the story of Bobby Fischer, the American boy wonder chessmaster, who at the age of 29 in 1972 beat Russian champion chess player Boris Spassky to become the best chess player in the world. We meet young Fischer as a preteen growing up in Brooklyn where his preoccupation with chess makes him a very unusual brilliant young man. It would appear that his limited social skills matched with his total preoccupation with chess and a genius mind that could visualize and memorize numerous chess games in his head, suggests that he had Asperger’s disorder. As we follow this brilliant genius into preparation and ultimately arriving at the classic series of matches in Iceland, we see how he became preoccupied with the belief that he was being spied upon. He took apart a telephone looking for listening devices and even insisted that the venue for the match be moved to a basement setting instead of the large stage where it was to be held. He limited the number of TV cameras demanded a certain distance from him. The film does suggest that this classic famed match had great significance to both the United States and Russian governments. We even see that the CIA may have been involved in meeting Fischer’s demands for money and other requirements in order for him to participate in the match. However the film also points to the probability that Fischer’s mental functioning was much more than the political paranoia of the time. In fact, we think that a case can be made that Bobby Fischer had a schizophrenic mental disorder.

This well done film is a recounting of one of the most important and widely followed chess matches in history. It is also a sad story of a tortured soul. Tobey Maguire who plays Fischer as an adult did a fine job although it was a one dimensional view of this man as we never saw any evidence of him having any joy or meaningful relationships which we would expect even with a severe mental disorder. Liev Schreiber was quite good as the large contemplative Russian master Boris Spassky who barely said a word in the film.

Even though most of the movie audience probably knew the results of the match, seeing how it developed and went down was filled with suspense and drama. The subsequent downhill slide of Fischer which was not shown in the film and only told to us in a post-script at the end of the film, with a few newsreel clips, might have taken the movie to a more dramatic and interesting conclusion had the writers Steven Knight, Stephen Rivele and director Edward Zwick chosen to extend the film to this subject. (2015)

Comment » | 3 Stars, Drama, History

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