Word: luzhinã
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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Natalia’s strength is put to use in defending her mate from a variety of onslaughts. When Luzhin??€™s former coach, Valentinov (Stuart Wilson II), arrives with a malevolent desire to see his pupil defeated, he warns Turati that Luzhin plays poorly under pressure. Therefore the two conspire—Turati will play an aggressive game in order to create pressure on the board; Valentinov will disrupt Luzhin??€™s affair with Natalia in order to create pressure off the board...
Even before Valentinov’s arrival, Luzhin??€™s love is already threatened by Natalia’s parents, people of society who are hesitant to allow their daughter to marry such an eccentric. Yet Natalia nimbly maneuvers her way between each of these parties. Her success or failure (and Luzhin??€™s) is a curious question that the ending engages yet leaves unanswered...
...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...
...parallels between Luzhin??€™s life and his talent are physicalized in stunning landscapes that give the film’s Russian, Italian and American settings the feel of ornate life-size chessboards. There is, in fact, literally an ornate life-size chessboard right in front of the site of the chess tournament. Most of these landscapes, however, are much subtler—black and white tiled floors across which men and women walk deliberate patterns, rows of pillars arranged like pawns and carefully arrayed statues of kings, queens and their retinues of minions...
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