Chess is a game of strategy. Like any board game, it requires a lot of critical thinking. You have to figure out how to best your opponent in order to win the game. Even simple games like Chutes and Ladders require some form of strategy even if a lot of the strategy relies on luck. If you roll a one, you’ll go down a chute and be further away from the goal; if you roll a five, you’ll go up the ladder closer to the goal. Even a concept as simple as that requires some form of critical thinking. Chess is much more complex than that, however. You have a game board consisting of rows and columns of black and white squares all designed for chess pieces such as the rook, the king, the queen, the knight, and the pawn. Each piece can only move in a specific direction in a certain number of squares. For example, the pawn can only move forward one square but can move diagonally one square forward if it attacks an opposite piece. The queen can move in any direction as long as it wants while the king can move in any direction, but only for one square. The ultimate goal is to capture the opponent’s king or surround it so it can’t make a move. If it does, it’s an automatic loss. That’s the most I know about chess. I’ve played it before as a kid and a teenager, but I never studied it as thoroughly as competitive players do. So, watching The Queen’s Gambitopened my eye to the world of chess, the talented people behind it, and the psychological game behind it. And I enjoyed every minute of it.
The Queen’s Gambit is a coming-of-age story about Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), a young girl who was orphaned as a child and sent to an orphanage as a result. At first, nothing too remarkable is shown from her. That is, until she sees the orphanage’s custodian Mr. Shiabel, playing a game of chess by himself. Beth immediately becomes fascinated by it and thanks to tranquilizer drugs given to her and the rest of the children at the orphanage, she starts to visualize games of chess in her head, playing entire games on the ceiling. By the time she finally plays a game with Shiabel, she impresses him enough for him to teach her the ins and outs of chess. As she grows older and is adopted by a family, the Wheatlys, her skills sharpen, and Beth starts to play chess competitively, aiming to win all her matches to become the world champion. However, as her stardom grows, so does her isolation and addiction to alcohol and tranquilizer drugs. Time will tell how quickly she will wash out or rise to the top.
Image: Beth Harmon (played by Anya Taylor-Joy)
This series is so fascinating when it comes to telling the story of Beth Harmon. If I didn’t do my research beforehand, I could have sworn that this series was based on a real story with the characters being real people. Turns out, The Queen’s Gambit is based on a book by the same name written a few decades ago. The story of Beth sounds like something that a real prodigy would go through. As we have seen time and time again, child stardom does not always end well. For example, child actors often become adults that struggle to function as they dive into the addiction of drinking, drugs, and mental health problems. So, to watch everything happen to Beth go down portrayed in such a realistic way was heartbreaking, to say the least. To see her rise from her fall was also a sight to see.
Visually, the show is remarkable. Just like a chessboard, there’s black and white everywhere. The show in general has this monotone grey-hue to it that makes it feel like chess is all around. Very much like how chess has consumed Beth’s life as she garners success and is able to afford fancier clothes, most of these clothes are black and/or white with square patterns on them. Not only is her life focused on chess above all else, but she has also basically become chess herself. Beth is quiet, calculated, thinking one step ahead, but also sometimes unpredictable. Beth, in essence, becomes the queen of chess: the only woman in the competition and the strongest one on the board. One of her outfits near the end of the series has her dressed up in all white with a round hat that makes her look like a queen piece.
Image: Harry Beltik (played by Harry Melling) and Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy)
The show is also good at showing what is going on in Beth’s mind when it comes to chess. Like I said earlier, Beth tends to look up at the ceiling to visualize a game of chess going on in her mind. As she looks on, we see what she sees: a game of chess with all the pieces aligned and moving how she wants to move them. It’s like she is playing against herself and she is always the winner. When she is actually playing a game of chess, there is barely any dialogue spoken. Mainly because Beth and her opponent are so focused on the game trying to figure out how to best one another. You can tell just by their facial and hand expressions what kind of characters they are. You can tell if someone of stressed out or relaxed; if someone’s nervous or confident. There are times you can practically see the gears turning in their head. We don’t see the entire game going on via screen time (because that would take literal hours), but instead, we get narration from Beth and other characters about what happened during the match post-game. They tell of the strategies used and how the players are feeling, sometimes confident from their win and other times devastated from their loss. I’m no expert in chess so a lot of the terms said went over my head, but just seeing how strategically each game was played was so fascinating (which makes sense since they had a real Grandmaster as a consultant, so every move was accurate). How each player thinks of their play isn’t just offense or defense. Sometimes it’s both. Sometimes it means retreating and rethinking things. Sometimes it’s finding a way to trick your opponent to make sure they fall into their own trap. If you have ever played a turn-based strategy game of any kind, you would be very familiar with these kinds of strategies and what goes on in those minds of theirs.
I think the character of Beth Harmon is one of the more unique ones I’ve seen. A lot of stories have their main protagonist as a more extroverted person who is confident and optimistic about things. They are the people who help give others confidence and the smiles they need to go about their day. They are characters audiences will latch onto almost immediately. Beth is not one of those characters. She’s introverted, stand-off-ish, has a hard time making friends and being social, and generally cold and calculated (all portrayed wonderfully by Taylor-Joy’s performance and I hope she at least gets a nomination for her role). She warms up as the series goes on, sure, but she’s no ray of sunshine. A lot of times, she feels like a “fish out of water” in a world full of socialites. The only place she is truly familiar with is the world of chess. No popular social group or clique will fully fulfill that place of belonging for Beth. Her world and her life is chess. It gets to the point where one of her friends describes Beth as the “Pride and sorrow of chess.” Someone who everyone can see as a shining light in the chess world while also allowing her obsession with the game to ultimately destroy her life, and yet despite all this, we still root for her. We still care about Beth and her growth into her own person. We want her to win. We feel a sense of pride when she wins and a sense of sorrow when she loses and gets even five feet close to a bottle of wine or a tranquilizer pill. Beth truly has a gift for chess. She is able to learn and grow as a player in order to be a Grandmaster of the game. But she struggles as a person. Romance is pretty much off the table and it takes a long time for her to decide to accept help to train for her matches. Watching Beth try to find herself was both exciting and daunting. I was worried she would spiral so out of control that there would be no turning back. I wanted her to not only win but to live a somewhat normal life where she can be Beth.
Image: Young Beth Harmon (played by Isla Johnston)
There are a few issues I had with the stories such as I had a hard time keeping track of the time frames of the story sometimes and there were some characters that were brought back from their initial debut but weren’t established much further than that (Beth's past with her mother is one of them, but I won't say anything to refrain from spoilers). For example, the story jumps from 1963 to 1965 to 1966 to 1967. The timestamps are there, but for me at least, I had a hard time keeping track of how much time has exactly passed as some scenes skip through months without much indication of how much time has passed. Also, there is a woman who Beth meets at a store who has a baby. She says that she went to high school with Beth, got married right after graduation, and had a child shortly after. Her life is practically the polar opposites of Beth’s. Things seem to be going well for her except for the large purchase of alcohol in one of her bags. This indicates that things are not going as well as they seem and that she is in a similar place as Beth though maybe not as extreme. It’s a good little glimpse into what other characters are doing compared to Beth, but I really wish they had established this a little more. Maybe leaving things up to interpretation is for the best and the showrunner’s intention, but I would have liked at least a hint as to why someone else is diving into alcoholism too.
Overall, I really enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit. I started back on Friday night, took a break, and then finished the rest on Saturday afternoon. The series is only seven episodes long ranging from fifty minutes to one hour each, so it’s a quick binge. I honestly would not even be upset if the series ended with the first season and didn’t have another. I think it ended really well and I honestly can’t see them progressing the story further unless they have Beth mentor another rising female chess player or something. I think Beth’s arc is finished. If they do choose to continue it, I would at least hope they can keep up the level of quality they have achieved. I know millions of people have already tuned in and watched this show, but if you haven’t I would strongly suggest you do. I never knew a show about chess would be as addicting as it is, but here we are. Check and mate.
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