The Queen's Gambit

The Pawn Identity

The Queen's Gambit
Netflix 2019 Directed by Scott Frank
Mini Series Seven Episodes

The Queen’s Gambit is a seven episode mini series about a fictional chess player from a somewhat damaged background who goes on to compete against the Russian Grandmasters on their home turf. Now, I’ve never been much of a chess player, it has to be said. I learned the game when I was about 6 or 7 but I lost pretty much all the games I played so I never really bothered getting into it properly. I could only see the game for four or five moves ahead and don’t have the kind of mind able to focus on huge combinations of moves and their consequences simultaneously. I’m more of a Maths person so, despite the ‘chance’ element of a dice roll, I’m much more of a Backgammon friendly competitor, truth be told.

That being said, I’ve always been fascinated with the way it’s been portrayed in film, with two of my favourites of the many chess movies out there being The Luzhin Defence (a very early, very short review from the dawn of NUTS4R2 can be found here, don’t judge me, I was just starting out) and Knight Moves with Christopher Lambert, which I haven’t seen since it played in cinemas back in the early 1990s... but I remember it made some kind of impact on me.

Another thing which drew me to finding a way to see this one was the actress playing the adult version of main protagonist, Beth Harmon. She’s portrayed here by Anya Taylor-Joy and I’ve been looking out for her work since seeing her in films like The VVitch (reviewed here) and Morgan (reviewed here). I’ve seen her in a number of films since (I’m really not going to list all my reviews with her in this blog article) and I have to say that, she’s one of those rare actresses who come along, just occasionally, possessing real star quality... like the old titans of cinema from an age long gone. Sure, there are some great actresses out there and I love them all but the strange, almost alien look of this actress and the fact that, when she’s on screen it’s hard to look at anybody else, is something else. She’s pretty good at her craft, for sure but, she’s also a ‘star’ and those are very few and far between these days. This mini series really cements that aspect of her, in my opinion.

That being said, it would be easy to fall into the trap to think that she somehow carries the weight of the series on her shoulders here but, she doesn’t. This is so well presented and directed, for one thing, that the somewhat dazzling technique of the work really pulls all the elements together. Plus there’s a hell of a crew of good actors and actresses who more than hold their own alongside the main protagonist and they also deserve a shout out and a rousing round of applause... I’ll name check Annabeth Kelly and Isla Johnston (as younger versions of Beth Harmon), Moses Ingram, Marielle Heller (brilliant as the ‘mother’ who adopts the orphaned Harmon), Harry Melling, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Marcin Dorociński and, in a small but impactful character role, Bill Camp as the caretaker who teaches the young orphan the rudiments of chess.

The show starts off with a short bookend section set in the 1960s (when the majority of the show takes place) which we catch up to again in episode six, to introduce Anya Taylor-Joy... but then very quickly switches to the younger version of her character growing up in the 1950s, in an orphanage, for the reminder of the first episode (Taylor-Joy gets to shine in all the other episodes). The episode deals with how the character becomes dependent on tranquiliser pills to open up the part of her already Mathematically brilliant head to see chess moves in her mind’s eye (often presented as a literal interpretation and appearing on her ceiling, a shorthand which the director gets you used to so he can fall back on it to make quick plot points at a later point in the show). After she’s adopted and is starting to become successful as a chess player, she also starts taking up the booze favoured by her heavy drinking new mother and this further fuels her dependence on mind altering substances.

Now, when I started watching the first episode a credit came up on the screen that the show is based on a novel by Walter Tevis. So, yeah, of course, the whole drugs and alcohol thing made perfect sense. I haven’t read Tevis’ original novel so I can’t say how faithful this adaptation is but I have read his more famous novel, The Man Who Fell To Earth (which is also a wonderful movie, reviewed by me here, again... it’s an early review by me, don’t bite my head off). That particular story deals with an alien who is trying to get enough money to put together a spaceship to take him back to his own world and family but who ends up stuck on Earth after wrecking his life on booze and pills. So, yeah, I’m not going to give away the trajectory of Beth Harmon here but, I will say their characters share similar journeys in their respective tales... up to a certain point, at least.

And I’m really not going to spoil this for you and give you a move by move account of what happens throughout the seven episodes... but I will say it’s perhaps more than just a little predicatable and clichéd in content for most of the time. I will also say that this aspect of it really doesn’t matter because the execution is so well done and it certainly holds its interest as the writer/director lifts the lid on the obsessive thought processes and behaviours of international chess players. In terms of that aspect, a very special friend of mine complained that the conclusion was way too Disney-like and, I 'd have to agree on that to an extent, it’s a bit syrupy but, at the same time, it’s pretty much the only ending I was hoping for by the time it got there so, I’m not going to complain about that. Because it’s just done so well.

The drained pastels and check patterns found in the way the colours are sedately aligned in an almost mechanical and precision manner are a good solution to showing the way a chess playing mind might see the world. The chess games themselves are quite lively, with the main ones never being constructed the same way twice. In one important competition, for example, the director goes ‘full on’ into The Thomas Crown Affair mode in terms of using a kind of adrenalised split scene sequence vaguely reminiscent of the Steve McQueen/Faye Dunaway chess scene (without the erotic overtones, these are competition matches). Another tournament has a wonderful shot where a top down view of Beth Harmon against a competitor at one table is panned across past some audience members (some of whom dissolve out of shot to be replaced with different ones to show the passage of time while the camera is still making the slow pan) to finish up above the table opposite to reveal, when the camera then moves down into shot, that this is also Beth Harmon finishing up another opponent on the opposite table. And stuff like this and the audio cues of the clock timers running through non-chess scenes with equal abandon keeps the series sharp and constantly watchable.

Another thing the director does, which shows a very mature understanding of the use of drama in literature but, it can be extremely powerful in the world of the moving image too, is to have a big lead in with a lot of chess games in a specific tournament until the character gets to play the final against the opponent you are waiting for her to beat (after twice setting up the moment by having her lose to him a couple of times previously in the show)... only to see the very first, opening move (as a pawn is slammed down with a fake echo to accentuate that, yeah, this a big one) before cutting away from the game completely and just going onto the aftermath to explain, via the two players in a bar, what actually happened. This was a great way of doing things and really showed me the director knew how to ‘throw film around’ to heighten the tension and release of the drama. Great stuff.

Also, as an added bonus to cinephiles in the first episode, the director really ramps up the tension by having Beth attempt to steal some locked away tranquilisers while all the other staff and kids at the orphanage are busy watching The Robe (which I reviewed here). The thing is, if you’re familiar with the movie, you’ll know that Harmon goes to do her stuff when the movie is on the final scene... so it’s a mite more suspenseful, I suspect, if you know that the film has only a few more minutes to run before the possibility that she’s caught.

And I don’t think there’s much more I want to reveal about The Queen’s Gambit... you need to watch this little slice of genius for yourself. I will say that Carlos Rafael Rivera's score is wonderful but, alas, not available on CD at time of writing (only in a stupid, electronic download format) and the needle drop songs throughout out the show are... well, it’s mostly set in the sixties so, of course they’re going to be pretty good. Also, I love that they use a Donovan song in this because, hey, he’s one of the all time great artists who truly encompasses the spirit of the 1960s. So, yeah, this show comes with a definite recommendation from me and you should all check this out. One of the great mini series of our time. 

A Walk Among The Tombstones

Tomb It May Concern

A Walk Among The Tombstones
2014  USA
Directed by Scott Frank
UK cinema release print.

I’ve not seen Eight Million Ways To Die but it’s probably worth mentioning that here because it’s a film which stars Jeff Bridges playing the same character, Matthew Scudder, that Liam Neeson plays in A Walk Among The Tombstones. Nor have I read the 18 books published by Lawrence Block about the adventures of the character on which each of those two films is based... A Walk Among The Tombstones being the tenth in the series. So I guess what I’m saying here is that I can’t pitch this review in the context of any past experience of the character in any previous media incarnations. So as far as it’s success as a faithful adaptation goes... I can’t tell you.

What I can do, however, is point out to you that this is one of the best film noir style thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not exactly a police procedural movie as such because, certainly, the main character Matthew Scudder, played quite brilliantly and believably by Liam Neeson as a recovered alcoholic, is an ex-cop who now works as an unlicensed “private” detective... but it certainly uses many of the investigative methods, or at least the cinematic shorthand for them, used by both policiers and various other private detective films throughout the years.

When I say it’s a modern film noir I’m not being creative with my words either. This is almost a text book classic noir film with many, if not all, of the main ingredients of the classic noir thrillers of the 1940s and 1950s. In terms of the crisp quality of the cinematography and general mise en scene as well as the grimy, grey moral territory that’s often best rendered through a curiously chiaroscuro point of view, allowing the audience to stand in moral judgement of the dilemmas faced by the anti-heroes of such tales.

The plot concerns one of the big noir themes used almost to oblivion but re-appropriated very well for a film with this kind of tone... revenge.

Liam Neeson’s character is hired by a drug dealer because he believes he has a particular set of skills needed to find the people who kidnapped the drug dealer’s wife, ransomed her for a large sum of money and then chopped her up into little pieces after he’d paid them off. There is no shilly shallying around with motivations here... the dealer makes it clear that he intends to kill them. This makes it a little harder for Neeson’s character to take on the job but some cinematic sleight of hand which is presented to the audience as a kind of male bonding follow up scene to his first interview with the husband is all that’s needed to justify why the less morally flexible (than he used to be) Matthew Scudder takes on the job in the first place.

One of the main ingredients of the standard film noir, the femme fatale or presence of a strong female character in the plot, is curiously absent in this movie. There is really no single female lead in this film, only a few supporting female characters. However, it’s tellingly noirish, I think, that the women and girls in this film are mostly seen as the motivations for the actions of the majority of the male protagonists and antagonists here. If you were feeling mean spirited about it I guess you could say that all the female figures in this movie are reduced to catalysts and obsessions for the men to act out their revenge fantasies. However, the other way to look at it is that the female presence, in a movie mostly devoid of women, is actually very strong and certainly, the way one of those women is viewed in this movie, that of the drug dealer’s wife Carrie, is very much an echo of the way a female presence can be used in a classic film noir.

To explain that last comment, Carrie’s painting on her husbands wall serves as a very visual and constant reminder reminder (the camera loves it) of the woman he has lost and is consequently so obsessed with. His brother, also, has various sketches, paintings and studies of her on his wall and the character almost comes to life in a way just from her painting. This is very similar to the way the portrait of Gene Tierney’s character Laura is used in the first half of the movie Laura, in this respect, although that’s probably all I want to say about that particular classic noir in case you’ve not seen it and I give too much away. Needless to say, there was something I was expecting to happen in A Walk Among The Tombstones because I’d made that connection while watching it, which doesn’t actually take place, I’m happy to say.

What we do get in this film, however, is a heck of a lot of male bonding. There’s even a young teenage character who Scudder, almost accidentally, takes on as an assistant who serves both that function and, surely not coincidentally, acts as a kind of redemption fulfilment figure for Scudder due to certain aspects of a shoot out that went wrong in Scudder’s past.

We see this shoot out at the start of the movie, right after a scene which is used to establish Neeson’s character as someone who is initially unlikeable. This shoot out is probably the most kinetic and frenetically edited sequence in the whole movie and, when we revisit the scene later to bring new information to it which wasn’t revealed at the opening of the piece, it’s then that we see why the young teenage character, TJ, has been introduced into the plot line.

The rest of the movie, including the revisited opening chase and shoot sequence, is shot and cut in a much more sedate manner which really allows the shots to breathe and the actors to perform in either long static shots or slow, languorous camera pans etc. The film never gets boring though and concentrates and distills your attention to the emotional heart of the story so that the revenge motif and the moral dilemmas faced by many of the characters never once seem false or fake. You believe in the people in this and you know something bad is going to happen to a lot of them here before the film resolves itself in a very curious couple of ending shots which are, in some ways, very brave of the film-makers.

It’s also got a very nice score by a guy called Carlos Rafael Rivera that is totally appropriate, never overpowers the dialogue or action, but still maintains a strong melodic presence throughout the whole of the picture. I’m guessing it works okay as a stand alone listen too so that’s a reminder to myself right there to go and order the CD after I finish writing this. The score really helps too, in a shoot out sequence at the end that is a stop and start counterpoint to some of the “steps” of a recovering alcoholic, acting as a kind of audio glue. At least I think it was used in that sequence... I’ll need to watch it again. I think this particular sequence was almost a misstep from the director but, since there’s a couple of extended denouement scenes at the finish of the movie, it didn’t completely spoil the tone of the rest of the film for me and I’ll cut them some slack for that. For all I know they deliberately needed to slow the sequence down for some reason, in the final cut, and I can appreciate the metaphor as it’s presented, at least.

Not much else to say about this one. If you like strong, gritty, noirish movies with characters you can believe in and a high level of both emotional and physical violence at certain points then you can’t really go wrong with A Walk Among The Tombstones. Neeson’s performance is superb, as you would expect from an actor of his calibre, but so is everyone else in this and the dialogue is pitch perfect. Seriously go out and see this dark little thriller while it’s still showing.