Word: chesse
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...game of chess, the queen, capable of moving multiple spaces in any direction, is the most agile and powerful piece on the board. It is perhaps because the game lends itself to such a strong female protagonist that a movie about chess, The Luzhin Defense, was chosen to kick off this year’s Ninth Annual Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema, which began yesterday...
Gorris’s adaptation stars John Turturro as Alexander Ivanovich Luzhin, an ingenious but eccentric chess master who is at once addicted and allergic to the game he has mastered. Though his characters is so out of touch with the reality outside of the chessboard that he cannot even hold up a casual conversation, he nonetheless portrays a charming helplessness that neither the audience nor the film’s female protagonist can help responding...
Luzhin is participating in an important chess tournament against Turati (Fabio Sartor), the world’s top chess master, when he stumbles upon Natalia (Emily Watson). Before he has even asked for her name or managed to engage her in a conversation of more than a few words, Luzhin asks for her hand in marriage. This provides the starting point for the strange yet endearing relationship between...
...certainly no less outstanding than Turturro. The story is introduced, and much of it told, through Natalia’s perspective, and it seems that she is much wiser to the complexities of the real world than her counterpart, who is lost in the complexities of the world of chess...
...strengths of The Luzhin Defense are its enigmatic plots and themes. The film maintains the same suspense of the high stakes games of chess and fills the screen with complex interrelationships between characters. All of its thematic gestures seem to feed off of each other, each adding another layer of depth. The film, for example, raises a subtle contrast between Luzhin’s brilliant capacity for strategy and his crippling psychological illnesses. This contrast plays out along the constant parallel between Luzhin’s life and chess games and richens the film’s ending...