'The Queen's Gambit' Is a Grand, Masterful Chess Drama

The Queen’s Gambit has ended up becoming one of the hottest TV shows of 2020.  And, of course, I had to watch it.  Not only is the buzz for it considerable enough to amply fuel my curiosity, but it revolves around a topic I find interesting: chess.

I like and play chess, though I’m not a die-hard enthusiast.  Still, it’s something I recognize as fascinating.  While there have been numerous fun attempts to reimagine it, chess is already amazing as it originally is.  It’s probably the ultimate game.  Everyone can get into it, but only an elite few can truly master it.  For there is perhaps no other game in which there is an extreme distance between its entry point and its peak form.  That means the basic gameplay is so easy to grasp and get the hang on, and yet, when the game is played at the highest level, it’s radically far more complex and intense.

The Queen’s Gambit, as far as I remember, is the very first chess-centered work of fiction I’ve ever encountered that I found to be remarkably enjoyable.

The 7-episode miniseries is set during the Cold War, and tells the story of chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy).  After surviving a horrific car crash that took the life of her mother, 9-year-old Beth is taken to an orphanage.  There, she meets the custodian Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp), and through him, discovers her talent and love for chess – and winning.  As a teenager, she gets adopted by Mrs. Wheatley (Marielle Heller), and soon after, she starts her career as a professional chess player, travelling around the USA to take on the best chess players of the country.  Eventually, she gets into the world stage, where she encounters her most formidable rival – the Soviet world champion Vasily Borgov (Marcin Dorociński).

At its core, the storyline here is pretty familiar.  Beth is a phenom.  Her genius earns her fame and success.  She’s obsessed about her craft and remaining on or getting to the top.  At the same time, she’s dealing with trauma and loneliness.  Believing that drugs and alcohol allow her to optimize her performance as well as deal with pain, she constantly turns to them, which unsurprisingly results to her spiralling into addiction.  And thus, as she grinds her way toward her goals, she must also wrestle with her personal demons.  It’s the kind of story we’ve seen a thousand times already.  It’s the stereotypical “rockstar” character arc.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t come off as tiresomely derivative, since it’s so well-told that it’s quite absorbing.

Moreover, there’s something about the plot’s structure and beats that reminded me of anime storytelling.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there were times when I was watching it that I felt like I was watching an anime.

Anya Taylor-Joy, with her magnetic screen presence and her nuanced portrayal of Beth, is also a major factor why The Queen’s Gambit is so compelling to watch.  I won’t exactly call it her breakout role, since she’s been relatively famous since doing The Witch.  But her performance in this show is an absolute tour de force, and she will probably be most known for playing Beth Harmon from now on.

Aside from Taylor-Joy’s Beth, none of the performances and characters really struck me much, save for maybe Bill Camp as Mr. Shaibel and Marielle Heller as Mrs. Wheatley.  It’s probably because the parts of this show that I found most touching were those that revolved around the respective dynamics that Beth shared and developed with these characters.  Meanwhile, the rest of the cast were fine.  But, for me, they simply served functions in pushing the story forward, rather than being compelling characters on their own.

Moreover, The Queen’s Gambit is so immersive because, well, it utterly immerses the audience into its world, thank to its cinematic production design.  As a period piece, it completely succeeds in aesthetically capturing the look and ambiance of its 1960’s setting.  Working in complement to this is the thoughtful choice of songs for its sound track, which further defines and evokes the sense of that time period.  In fact, it’s so effective as a period piece that, in some weird way, it felt to me at times that Beth Harmon was a real historical figure rather than a completely fictional character, and I was watching her biopic.

Lastly, the costume design deserves to be praised on its own, specifically the work put into dressing Beth.  Look, I’m not even a fashion fan, but I found Beth’s wardrobe in this show to be stunning.  I enjoyed a fashion anime called Smile Down the Runway earlier this year, but as far as I remember, The Queen’s Gambit is the first ever show where I was made to excitedly look forward to what the main character would be wearing next.  It’s also likely that Anya Taylor-Joy simply has the talent to make anything she wears look good.  Lol.

I had a blast with The Queen’s Gambit.  It does have some imperfections, is thin in a few places, and inserts the typical leftist propaganda.  But the fact that I didn’t bother to detail any flaws in the body of this review is a testament to how negligible they are.  All in all, The Queen’s Gambit is a thrilling, worthwhile, gratifying watch.