If one wants to know what kind of power Netflix has over the media landscape, you simply need to look at The Queen’s Gambit. On the surface, it’s a difficult project to sell. Who would possibly want to watch a miniseries all about chess? As a game, it’s not the most attractive when compared to the more active, swift ones that are constantly in motion. Then again, that’s an outsider’s perspective, of the audiences eager to binge the latest fast-paced series whose plot is constantly evolving. They do not have time to understand the merit of what a rook or bishop, even considering the limitless amount of options per game that can be achieved. There’s so much that can happen in one match, and as show creators Scott Frank, Scott Allan, and Allan Scott would suggest: why not learn a little something?
To be fair, you won’t become a grandmaster from watching these seven episodes. At best it will encourage you to buy a chessboard and learn for yourself the ways to navigate the space. Otherwise, prepare for a compelling little drama that follows the life of Beth Harmon as she goes from misunderstood orphan into the champion of the world. On one level, it’s another girl-power story where Harmon enters a room full of scoffing men and comes out with the trophy. However, it’s a much more compelling drama underneath, finding the trials and tribulations slowly mounting over her life as she determines what matters in her life.
One thing to consider is that the series is a bit misleading at first, finding Harmon waking up in a French hotel. We don’t know why she is there, but it gives off the impression that she is the bad girl of chess, doing regular consumption of drugs and alcohol. It’s not wrong, but it’s only a minor detail into something greater about the character. There are plenty of youthful exploits to be had here, but they’re more wrinkles than aspects that define her. In fact, the series will not answer why she’s in that Parisian hotel room until the penultimate episode. There’s a need to carry through the story up to this point, which is downright fascinating.
The Queen’s Gambit is a boiler-plate origin story that does everything necessary to win over the audience immediately. It all starts with the tragic backstory: her parents dead, she lives in an orphanage where she wanders through life, being told that she doesn’t matter. Upon befriending staff, she learns that she is a chess prodigy. In one of the series’ greatest recurring motifs, Harmon will be lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. She adores chess so much that she sees it above her head at night, recounting different strategies and anticipating when she gets to show off her skills. Those around her may consider it a foolish thing to obsess over, but it drives her to give life purpose.
By the end of the first episode, it’s understood what motivates her. She is the outsider who has nobody on her side, needing her wits to make herself feel validated. By the time that she winds up in a foster family, there is still that disconnect. Her mother is stuck in a loveless marriage, playing piano all day to escape her own misery. She is the fear that Harmon will be stuck if she doesn’t find a way to get out. Considering that most of the show takes place in the 1960s, it manages to find her at the shift in culture when certain practices have become more relaxed and there’s a belief that she can come away from a champion. The world is changing, and it’s about time that a champion was a woman.
While most of the story can be considered arguably conventional, down to its eclectic use of 60s rock and pop, there is something to be said about watching Anya Taylor Joy play Harmon with this observant eye. Even as she watches her friends sing along to a teeny bopper on the TV, she finds herself more drawn to chess, a need to do more than give into vapid interests. She sells it with every intense stare, a need to cut a conversation short so that she can go back to her hotel room and practice. She has a confidence that has been building, mostly in films like Emma (2020), that makes you understand how much weight goes behind chess. The obsession is there in her bookish nature and slow revelations that she didn’t have a conventional childhood.
She has pain behind her eyes, the need to feel like she belongs. As she becomes a promiscuous teenager and 20-something, she manages to get closer. There are stories of debauchery and sex, but they feel buried in the chess that consumes her life. In a post-coital conversation, she finds her mate discussing strategy. The world is inescapable, and this form of escapism can’t quite give her the satisfaction she needs. In fact, it doesn’t really feel right. Her mind needs to be focused, to prove that she’s much more than a pretty face. As she rises from local legend to state and United States champion, she becomes more confident, her wardrobe becoming more radiant as the clout follows her.
What makes The Queen’s Gambit such a perfect representation of a seemingly dull sport is how it makes it feel like royalty. The story spans continents, cameras chasing her as she enters hotels and prepares for her next match. She is on the cover of magazines and suddenly becomes an international celebrity. Scenes of her lounging poolside with her mother have this glow to them that makes you admire how much craft went into this movie. Every location feels designed with wealth in mind, where even the hotel rooms feel like they shine. Alcohol is on tap, and parties are downstairs. It’s the lush experience that this show sold itself on, and it manages to feel like the greatest feeling in the world.
Halfway through the series, the whole thing becomes this hypnotic exercise. While it’s unlikely to teach you chess nor deliver on anything outwardly explicit in terms of debauchery, it manages to feel like the wildest time. It’s a place where friends get together and discuss strategy, picking up books from the library to study the strategy of their upcoming opponents. It’s as much an exercise in rewarding obsessiveness as it is feeling like there’s an alternate world where chess was more popular than baseball, where the world went insane over a chessboard that was perpetually splayed out on a coffee table.
The show is addictive in that way, making you feel like you’re peering into an exclusive club that has its own set of rules. Scott Frank understands it well enough that the high-priced jargon manages to compel the viewer, making you feel like you’re in on the various games of strategy. On some level, you know exactly how this story will end, especially as Harmon becomes part of an international chess match with a Russian grandmaster. This is one of those stories that reward the underdog formula predictably, and yet there is an earnestness to the whole thing that makes you believe in the challenge, of needing to shift the pawns just far enough that you have an upper advantage. This isn’t to say that there aren’t twists even within the gameplay, but Frank makes it all feel like a nail-biter by the end.
Again, a lot of it is credited to Joy, who elevates the film with a masterful effort, making Harmon into a three-dimensional character whose success in chess holds a lot more weight than a simple win. This is the woman who entered her first chess match without an official score and beat the best. She is the one who became mentored by a series of experts. She formed her own family, with characters entering and exiting her life throughout the series in such a way that her success hearkens back to her youth in unexpected ways. It isn’t just that she has progressively become more focused on the board. There are emotional relationships that start premature and end having more of a significant impact.
It also helps that the series has artistry hidden inside of the drama. Whenever chess is involved, don’t be surprised when a 60s pop song comes on and the framework changes. Sometimes it’s a simple montage, watching pieces navigate a board in rapid succession. Other times it becomes more interesting, featuring everything from split screens to animated sequences of chess pieces moving around a board. Everything about the show may be goofy to those who don’t see why you should dedicate your life to chess, but it becomes understood by the end that this was a part of Harmon’s identity, giving her focus. Without it, she’d probably be as wayward as her friends who lack any real drive throughout the story. She would be her adopted mom, playing piano for hours on end, waiting for any sign of respect.
The Queen’s Gambit does not reinvent the wheel, but it does what every great sports underdog story does. It makes you want to invest in this world. There’s so much passion for it that it suddenly becomes more alive than any basketball game. It’s a world that subliminally involves the viewer and makes them imagine their own lives as champions, able to have a strong impact simply by moving the queen. By the time that it becomes a challenge against the world, it suddenly feels more important than anything else. This story of one person searching for validation ends with just that, and you are thankful to have gotten insight into everything.
In a time where every Netflix series feels like it’s too long, The Queen’s Gambit manages to feel like an anomaly. It’s the one series that’s easy to marathon but leaves you wanting more. It’s ridiculous to say, but you kind of want the bottle episode around a pivotal chess match that reveals some other dark secrets in Harmon’s life, watching the camera roll around the players like this was a Michael Bay movie. So much of the chess matches are addictive that they’re better than any drugs. Harmon understands that, and it’s fun to watch her reach her best self. There’s so much that could be achieved with this concept that it’s a bummer (or a miracle?) that this series ends before it wears out its welcome.
Despite having a lot of conventional elements in the narrative structure, the miniseries manages to feel like it achieves the rare feat of making it feel brand new. There are images in this that feel vital, immediately iconic, and likely to inspire a new fad of chess playing. Don’t expect this to be a wild regale full of sex and booze. Those are for mere mortals. Joy’s Beth Harmon is striving for greater power, and you can’t wait to see her reach there. The drama in her life is rich, but it’s all just obstacles testing her, waiting to see if she can be what she has dreamed about since she was a child. It’s what drives us all, and there’s something satisfying about getting to that point here that makes it one of the most entertaining discoveries of 2020. You may not become a chess master, but you'll feel like one by the time things are over.
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