Emily Watson's Natalia is absolutely the most loving and romantic lead character I have ever seen on a screen. She is the queen of this film beyond all doubt. Or, is she transmuted to the king? The internecine weaving of the chess games and the families' struggles for control, power, and victory is stunning. Just as the chess masters in the film do, the director is playing many simultaneous games with our mind at once, but all weave into either major or minor patterns. The period, the costumes, and imagery of early 20th century Italy's lake district is captured magnificently. Not a single square of space is wasted.So many brilliant scenes abound, I cannot recount them all. I recommend budgeting enough time to watch this movie twice, possibly a week apart, because you can't possibly capture all the poetry within a 64-square yet multi-dimensional framework in one setting. I did not read Nabakov's book, but to try an analogy of my own, what I am reading reminds of me of another romantically triumphant poetry-as-game movie, Barry Levinson's The Natural. It totally jettisoned the downbeat ending of Bernard Malamud's fatalistic book in favor of a romantic impressionism that was uniquely American. Well, the director did that one better by seamlessly meshing Russian and Italian morals and mores as a backdrop to enlightenment. The true story here is that games are zero-sum; there is a winner and a loser, unless both contestants draw. But, in life, and especially in the context of our immortal souls, we are only limited by those constraints and life's conventions to the extent we let others break our spirit. Pure love, as personified by Emily Watson's Natalia, can transcend and allow all of us to be enhanced by its gifts simultaneously. Only the barriers erected by our fears can cut us off from it.This is a magnificent movie (10/10).
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