My Review - The Queen's Gambit

My Rating 7 /10

I thought this was a fascinating story The Queen's Gambit is a fictional story that follows the life of an orphan chess prodigy, Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), during her quest to become the world's greatest chess player while struggling with emotional issues and drug and alcohol dependency. The story begins in the mid-1950s and proceeds into the 1960s. The Queen's Gambit is an adaptation of an American novel by Walter Tevis, the novel is 243 pages long .That brings me to my only real criticism of this six and a half hour 7 episode Netflix series is that in my view it would have made a fantastic 2 and a half hour feature movie. If I knew or cared anything about chess I may have enjoyed it more but at the conclusion I still didn't know anything or frankly care about the game of chess any more than I did in the beginning but I did enjoy the characters.

Saying that I take nothing away from the brilliant performance of Anya Taylor- Joy her portrayal of Beth Harmon if this had been a feature film would have been Oscar worthy in my opinion . I remember Beth Harmon well in the 2016 Thriller " Split "cast as Casey Cooke one of the abducted teenage girls trapped by multi personality mentally deranged Dennis/Patricia/Hedwig (James McAvoy) . Her performance stood out in that film and in The Queen's Gambit she is superb casting in the role of Beth ,who because of childhood abandonment and addiction issues has developed a Dissociation, or emotional detachment, a defense mechanism used to cope with distressing or overwhelming emotions. It involves disconnection between your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Often it begins as avoidance of past memories of traumatic events or of negative emotions. I think that description fits Beth Harmon's character perfectly . If it wasn't for the janitor of the orphanage Mr Shaibel played so well by Bill Camp who reluctantly introduces Beth to the game of Chess I'm sure she would have probably not survived . Chess becomes her entire obsession and I thought the chess characters became her world even taking the place of humans and not requiring any emotional investment . Even under the influence of addictive medication she plays chess in her mind . Beth reads all the Chess masters books learning their strategy and becomes a champion herself who eventually plays the greatest players in the world predominantly men of course.

It's a very good supporting cast in the series I particularly liked Thomas Brodie-Sangster remember him as the little boy in Love Actually (2003) and Simon in Nanny McPhee (2005) .He's had a great film and television career since those childhood roles in films like Nowwhere Boy (2009) Game of Thrones as Jojen Reed , Wolf Hall, and Star Wars V11. In The Queen's Gambit Thomas Brodie-Sangster is cast as Benny Watts also a Chess master but someone who seems to be able to break through the cold aloofness of Beth Harmon and who eventually wins her respect and friendship helping her enter the World of the Champion .

If The Queen's Gambit was a feature film not a long drawn out series I think I'd be rating it much higher . This applies to many series I watch these days I think they're padded out far too much . It's rare for me to find the opposite example of a series being better than a film but there are examples of that like The Sopranos , West Wing, Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Brideshead Revisited to name a few . I'm so glad the recent Netflix movie I reviewed The Trial of the Chicago 7 was a feature film and not a series. It also looks like it will be an Academy Award contender . I gave that a 10/10 because it was concise ,great script and didn't wander off into the padding that mini series tend to do . It doesn't matter if you have the greatest actors in the world if you lose the viewers interest even for one episode you can spoil the impact.