Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
Walter Tevis wrote six novels. Three of them were adapted into classic motion pictures: The Hustler from Robert Rossen in 1961, The Man Who Fell to Earth from Nicolas Roeg in 1976, and The Color of Money from Martin Scorsese in 1986.
Now Netflix gives us a miniseries adaptation of Tevis's penultimate novel, The Queen's Gambit, about a female chess prodigy coming of age in Cold War-era America. Scott Frank, the two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter for Out of Sight and Logan serves as showrunner, writing and directing all seven episodes.
Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Beth Harmon. Beth is the daughter of one of the nation's preeminent mathematicians, who becomes increasingly unhinged and unstable over the course of Beth's childhood. The terrible car wreck that leaves Beth orphaned seems a bit like an unfortunate inevitability.
Eight-year-old Beth is placed in the care of a Kentucky orphanage, which forces the children to take tranquilizers to keep them docile and compliant -- an occurance that kicks off a narcotics abuse habit that will follow Beth well into adulthood. Beth is such a mathematical genius that she finishes all of her math quizzes in the first few minutes of class. She is sent down to the basement to clean the chalkboard erasers. Down there, she encounters the orphanage's janitor, who initiates her into the world of chess.
This is exactly the kind of thing the streaming services should be doing -- something that doesn't fit into any of the conventional models, too lengthy and serialized to be a motion picture, but too cinematic and condensed to really be a television show. It feels exactly as long as it needs to be, with the story of Beth's rise in the international chess scene paralleled by the demons of her traumatic childhood and her ongoing struggles with drugs and alcohol.
The novel was well-regarded for its technical accuracy in the depiction of the game it is centered around. To ensure that the miniseries would meet the same standard, Frank brought in Bruce Pandolfini (who advised Tevis on the novel) and Garry Kasparov (one of the greatest chess players of all time) to design all of the matches.
One of the best things about this limited series is its focus on community. It would have been easy to tell a story about this brilliant young woman up against the patriarchy, but this show isn't interested in that. There is some skepticism because Harmon is a girl, but not really any hostility. And while Harmon lives a solitary existence for large stretches of her life, unable to relate to many of her peers who lack her life experiences and who can't keep up with her intellect, she is not an island. There are so many people who rally around her along her journey.
Structurally, it is very much like a sports movie, complete with a climax centered around chess's equivalent of the Big Game. What makes it such a triumph is that where she prevails or not in the match is less important than whether she can find some semblance of inner peace. She changes and grows, stumbles and rallies, so that by the end you really feel the weight and the cumulative impact of her transformation.
Highly, highly recommended.
Now Netflix gives us a miniseries adaptation of Tevis's penultimate novel, The Queen's Gambit, about a female chess prodigy coming of age in Cold War-era America. Scott Frank, the two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter for Out of Sight and Logan serves as showrunner, writing and directing all seven episodes.
Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Beth Harmon. Beth is the daughter of one of the nation's preeminent mathematicians, who becomes increasingly unhinged and unstable over the course of Beth's childhood. The terrible car wreck that leaves Beth orphaned seems a bit like an unfortunate inevitability.
Eight-year-old Beth is placed in the care of a Kentucky orphanage, which forces the children to take tranquilizers to keep them docile and compliant -- an occurance that kicks off a narcotics abuse habit that will follow Beth well into adulthood. Beth is such a mathematical genius that she finishes all of her math quizzes in the first few minutes of class. She is sent down to the basement to clean the chalkboard erasers. Down there, she encounters the orphanage's janitor, who initiates her into the world of chess.
This is exactly the kind of thing the streaming services should be doing -- something that doesn't fit into any of the conventional models, too lengthy and serialized to be a motion picture, but too cinematic and condensed to really be a television show. It feels exactly as long as it needs to be, with the story of Beth's rise in the international chess scene paralleled by the demons of her traumatic childhood and her ongoing struggles with drugs and alcohol.
The novel was well-regarded for its technical accuracy in the depiction of the game it is centered around. To ensure that the miniseries would meet the same standard, Frank brought in Bruce Pandolfini (who advised Tevis on the novel) and Garry Kasparov (one of the greatest chess players of all time) to design all of the matches.
One of the best things about this limited series is its focus on community. It would have been easy to tell a story about this brilliant young woman up against the patriarchy, but this show isn't interested in that. There is some skepticism because Harmon is a girl, but not really any hostility. And while Harmon lives a solitary existence for large stretches of her life, unable to relate to many of her peers who lack her life experiences and who can't keep up with her intellect, she is not an island. There are so many people who rally around her along her journey.
Structurally, it is very much like a sports movie, complete with a climax centered around chess's equivalent of the Big Game. What makes it such a triumph is that where she prevails or not in the match is less important than whether she can find some semblance of inner peace. She changes and grows, stumbles and rallies, so that by the end you really feel the weight and the cumulative impact of her transformation.
Highly, highly recommended.
