The Queen’s Gambit (2020) [TV-MA] ***** (updated January 25, 2023)

A film review by Allison Shoemaker for rogerebert.com on Oct. 23, 2020.

When you read the words Netflix limited drama series about addiction, obsession, trauma, and chess, the first adjective which springs to mind is probably not thrilling. But here we are, and The Queen’s Gambit, Scott Frank’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ coming-of-age novel of the same name, absolutely demands the use of thrilling. Anchored by a magnetic lead performance and bolstered by world-class acting, marvelous visual language, a teleplay that’s never less than gripping, and an admirable willingness to embrace contradiction and ambiguity, it’s one of the year’s best series. While not without flaws, it is, in short, a triumph. And it is satisfying not just as a compelling period drama, a character study, and a feast for the eyes. It’s also, at its heart, a sports movie wrapped up in the vestments of a prestige TV series. Ask yourself this: When is the last time you fist-pumped the air over chess? Isn’t that something you deserve?

Odds are that Beth Harmon (the remarkable Anya Taylor-Joy) will earn quite a few fist-pumps as people discover Frank and co-creator Alan Scott’s excellent series. We meet Beth as an eight-year-old (Isla Johnson) when she’s left impossibly unharmed - physically, at least - by the car crash that kills her mother. Her father’s not in the picture, so Beth finds herself at the Methuen Home, a Christian school for orphans in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. While there, she develops three things: a friendship with Jolene (newcomer Moses Ingram, excellent), a passion for chess, and a physical and emotional dependence on the little green tranquilizers fed to the children until they’re outlawed by the state of Kentucky. When she finally leaves the school, she’s got those last two things packed in her suitcase alongside a bunch of chess books, a sizable ego, some unexplored trauma, and no small amount of self-loathing. But it’s the game that drives her, sending her both to the heights of the competitive chess world and, increasingly, to her hoard of pills and the oblivion offered by alcohol.

In short, Beth has a lot to handle. Luckily, Anya Taylor-Joy is more than up to the task. Playing Beth from 15 onward, Taylor-Joy gives the kind of performance that only becomes more riveting the longer you sit with it. It’s a turn of both intoxicating glamour and precious little vanity, internal without ever being closed-off, heartbreakingly vulnerable and sharply funny, often at once. Much of the story hinges on when and how Beth is alone - and sometimes she’s most alone when surrounded by people - and Taylor-Joy’s performance is particularly remarkable in these moments. Scenes of Beth alone in her home, in a stranger’s apartment, on a plane, in her bed at night - they all hum with the kind of energy that only arises when one is truly unobserved. In this case, however, she’s creating that energy in a room full of cameras and crew members. That kind of honesty and release is the stuff of acting legend, like Eleanora Duse’s blush. It’s yet another high watermark in a young career already full of them, and somehow she’s never better than when Beth is sitting silently behind a chess board.

We’ll come back to those scenes, but it would be a mistake to assume that Taylor-Joy’s only great scene partner is the camera, gazing from across the 64 squares of the board. Frank and casting director Ellen Lewis assembled an ensemble of heavy-hitters, including the great Bill Camp as Mr. Shaibel, the isolated janitor who introduces Beth to the game, Thomas Brodie-Sangster (as Benny Watts) and Harry Melling (as Harry Beltik) two young men who are first chess rivals, then lovers and eventually allies in the chess world, the wonderful (if underused) Moses Ingram, and actor / writer / director Marielle Heller, who gives a hypnotic performance as the fragile, damaged, compassionate Alma Wheatley, the woman who eventually welcomes Beth into her home. There’s not a dud in the bunch; even the actors who show up for a scene or two at most give performances that feel fully inhabited. It’s a stunner of an ensemble.

And here’s a bonus: they all look incredible. The Crown is rightly praised for its sumptuous, detailed production design and costuming, and The Queen’s Gambit will likely find itself compared to its Netflix predecessor with some frequency. But for all the strengths of The Crown, it rarely showcases the kind of imagination on display here. Costume designer Gabriele Binder, hair and makeup head Daniel Parker, and production designer Uli Hanisch (the latter of Cloud Atlas, Sense8, and Babylon Berlin) do much more than capture the look and feel of the 1960s in the United States and abroad. They use that aesthetic to illuminate Beth’s mindset. When does Beth embrace the wilder aspects of ‘60s makeup? Why, when she’s balancing precariously on the edge and her thick eyeliner serves to make her look even thinner and more fragile. That’s one example of many. It’s incredibly thoughtful and stylish. Consider it isolated breakdown chic.

The aesthetic of Beth’s inner world is also explored, though to detail what that looks like and what it means is to diminish some of the pleasure (and anxiety) it engenders. Just know that it lends Beth’s struggles a visceral energy that most stories of addiction tend to either take for granted or overplay. And for the most part, that care and thoughtfulness is found in all of the tropes present in The Queen’s Gambit (and there are plenty of tropes - this is a sports movie in disguise, after all). That said, Frank’s largely excellent teleplays do occasionally stumble, particularly when it comes to race (Jolene deserves better) and gender. The latter is a shortcoming shared with Frank’s Godless - both have their hearts in the right place, but are perhaps not as thoughtful or insightful when it comes to sex, love, and the realities of a patriarchal society than they believe themselves to be.

Frankly, it’s hard to get too worked up about those shortcomings thought, especially when the chess starts. The chess! My god, the chess. Like any good sports movie, this character-driven period drama lives and dies by its editing. Editor Michelle Tesoro should go ahead and buy a bookshelf for all the hardware she’s about to pick up for The Queen’s Gambit right now; the chess sequences are all electric, and each in its own way. One will make you hold your breath. Two will likely bring you to tears. Some are funny. Some are infuriating. Some are, somehow, very, very sexy. Each is electric, and Tesoro and Taylor-Joy make them so through skill, talent, and precision. (Some credit here is also due to chess consultants Bruce Pandolfini and Garry Kasparov. I know very little about chess, but somehow The Queen’s Gambit convinced me otherwise and dazzled me all at once.)

Every truly great sports story has not one, but two beating hearts. There’s the sport itself, a game or competition in which the viewer becomes undeniably invested. And then there’s the player or players, someone whose life is much bigger than the game, yet is nevertheless somewhat consumed by it. The Queen’s Gambit has both those hearts, and both are racing. Frank, Taylor-Joy, and company never stop telling both those stories at once, and the result is a fascinating portrait of a young woman fighting to become the person she wants to be, battling for victory and for peace. When her journey brings her to Paris, she remembers the words of a woman who loved her and spends some time wandering museums, feeding her soul with something more than chess. Yet there’s never any doubt that somewhere, in some corner of her mind, she’s got her eyes on the board. What a privilege it is to see that corner and see the world’s beauty, all at once. [Shoemaker’s rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 = 88%]

Blogger's comments and links:

The ending scene takes place in Moscow early in 1968, the morning after Beth defeated Vasily Borgov to win the Moscow Invitational Tournament. She is on the way to the airport to leave Moscow, accompanied by her CIA handler, when she asks the driver to stop because she wants to walk. She walks down the promenade where she knows elderly gentlemen gather to play chess outdoors, and of course they recognize her and clearly they love her. For a girl who never knew her own father, and who had a father figure in the orphanage janitor Willian Shaibel who taught her to play chess, this is fulfillment - to be appreciated, even worshipped in Russia, a country obsessed with the game of chess. The first gentleman to recognize her then invites her to sit down. They set up the chess board, Beth removes her gloves, and the last word of the film is her saying sygrayem, pronounced sy.GRY.em, Russian for Let's Play. LINK

The Queen's Gambit ending explained; the major moments that wrapped up the story. LINK TO CINEMABLEND WEBPAGE

If the ending to the film made you tear up, you are not alone. It made Anya Taylor-Joy cry as well. LINK TO REFINERY29 ARTICLE

Beth Harmon's final word in the film is sygrayem which literally means Let's Play in Russian. LINK TO TRANSLATION WEBSITE

Magnus Carlsen (world chess champion since 2013) breaks down Harmon v Borgov final game from The Queen's Gambit LINK

 

The Queen's Gambit guide to Lexington, Kentucky LINK

Labels: drama, Fifties, high-school, Netflix, romance, rom-drama-faves, Sixties, sport, teenager

IMDb 86/100 
MetaScore (critics=79, viewers=30) 
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=96, viewers=94) 
Netflix 
Allison Shoemaker review 

Soundtrack

 

 

Blogger's comments on the novel:

The Walter Tevis novel of the same name strongly resembles the TV series, especially in the use of dialogue and narration from the novel. However, there are some notable differences (SPOILERS AHEAD). While Beth visualizes games in her head, she does not visualize them on the ceiling of her room. Townes has a much smaller part in the novel, he is not identified as gay and he does not appear at the 1968 Russian Invitational Tournament in the last episode. Cleo, whom Beth meets in Benny's NYC apartment, is an American girl named Jenny in the novel. She is not at the 1967 Paris Remy-Vallon tournament that Beth loses to Borgov. In the novel, Beth participates in the 1968 Kentucky State Chess Championship and loses. In the miniseries she goes to the tournament, has an argument with Harry Beltik in the parking lot and does not participate in the tournament. Jolene does not contact Beth; Beth gets her phone number from Mrs. Deardorff at Methuen. Jolene is living in Louisville. She was a Phys. Ed. major at Kentucky State University and through her efforts Beth goes to a gym every day for several months, gets in shape physically and gets her drinking and Librium addiction under control.

 

Being a visual person and loving film, especially romantic drama and comedy, I have to say that I much prefer the miniseries. Now, if we were comparing a 243-page paperback novel with a 2-hour film it might not be a fair comparison, but we are comparing it with a 393-minute (6hr 33min) 7-part miniseries. If a person read at 37 pages/hr it would take just about the same time to read the novel or watch the miniseries and the miniseries gives a MUCH richer experience. I don't ever need to read the novel again and I've watched the miniseries at least four times - so far.

 

Having thought about it a little more, let me say the novel provides intellectual understanding; it supports and enriches the experience of the miniseries. The miniseries gives significance to the intellectual understanding provided by the novel. The novel especially helps us understand what is going on inside Beth's mind and body before, during and after tournaments. Also, Beth's relationships with Jolene, Alma Wheatley, Harry Beltik and Benny Watts are developed a little better in the novel. What is absent in the novel? Well, there are very few details about how Alice Harmon, Beth's mother, dies. There's no Cleo at Remy-Vallon in Paris. There's no Townes in Moscow. Also, the novel helped me understand how Beth financed her life, was able to buy out Allston Wheatley's equity for $7,000 and make the mortgage payments, from her tournament winnings. So the novel does have value.

 

There are any number of delightful little cookies in this series. For instance, after Beth is adopted in Episode 2, she accompanies Alma to Ben Snyder's department store in Lexington, to shop for clothes. On the way upstairs to the bargain department she is attracted by two mannequins displaying dresses, before being captivated by the display of chess boards. We learn that Beth likes nice clothes. And after she wins the Kentucky State Chess Championship in October, 1963, she buys the blue dress with her winnings and we see her wearing it when she and Alma go to the Cincinnati Open Tournament. But the other dress, the white and black one? She wears that dress to the U.S. Open in Las Vegas in 1966.

 

Episode 1 "Openings": The film being shown in the orphanage auditorium is The Robe (1953) starring Richard Burton and Jean Simmons.

Episode 3 "Doubled Pawns", 30:39: Beth and Alma are in their hotel room at the 1966 US Open in Las Vegas. Alma is watching a murder mystery on the TV The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Martha (Barbara Stanwyck) is talking with Sam Masterson (Van Heflin):

Martha: What do you want?

Sam: I think I've got one. I think I've got a gimmick. A gimmick is an angle that works for you. To keep you from working too hard for yourself.

* * * * *

Being a hopeless romantic, I was naturally disappointed with the lack of romance in the series, and so I have envisioned an eighth episode which takes place first in Moscow and later in Lexington, Kentucky. Beth gets out of her State Department handler's cab on the way to the airport not only because she wants to visit the park where the elderly men are playing chess, but also because she and David Townes are falling in love and have agreed to stay in Moscow together after the tournament ends.

So he comes to the park, and after she has finished playing her chess game, which she wins of course, she and David take a cab to the airport, pick up her luggage and find a smaller, less-expensive hotel to stay in. After a few days together seeing the sights in Moscow they board a plane and return to the U.S. Beth invites David to stay with her and eventually they get married.

It turns out that David was not really gay, as he tried earlier to explain to her. He was just confused. Is he bisexual? Who knows?