Anya Taylor-Joy is stunning as a self-destructive chess prodigy in Netflix’s solidly entertaining miniseries.
I like chess, I like ’60s fashion, and I likeAnya Taylor-Joy.
So I was a cheap date forThe Queen’s Gambit, Netflix’s new seven-part miniseries streaming Friday.
Phil Bray/Netflix
Taylor-Joy plays Beth Harmon, an outcast teen chess prodigy who becomes a grown-up celebrity chess casualty.
Writer-director Scott Frank tracks her from a dingy orphanage cellar to globetrotting duels against Soviet supermen.
It’s a stylish period piece with the rambling-years momentum of a John Irving novel.
Luscious production design and a darkly fascinating lead performance duel against mawkish sentiment and a messy final act.
It’s always fun to watch, even when it’s playing emotional checkers.
The series begins with Beth hungover and half-sunk into a bathtub.
She’s in a palatial Paris hotel room; the place looks trashed.
She gets dressed, notices someone in her bed, pops some pills, and races downstairs.
Flashbulbs pop in her face.
The whole world press is there, watching her play the Russian grandmaster Vasily Borgov (Marcin Dorocinski).
They make a sharp contrast.
He’s a stern middle-aged communist, somehow loomingandinvisible, followed everywhere by his KGB retinue of bodyguard-jailers.
She’s glamorous, undone, afire, and lonely.
She arrives at a midcentury Catholic orphanage.
Those three words suggest nightmare possibilities, but here the abuse is all chemical.
Orderlies stuff the kids full of state-mandated tranquilizers.
Beth is getting high on Orphan’s Little Helper right as she discovers chess.
Downstairs, somber janitor Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp) plays solo matches on his ratty board.
He starts teaching Beth the basics, and realizes he’s found a queen.
It’s a familiar biopic trajectory, though the source material is a novel by Walter Tevis.
Taylor-Joy is at her best playing Beth as a kid with a Vulcan-ish awkward confidence.
Dad Allston (Patrick Kennedy) is distantly busy.
When she realizes her adopted daughter has a lucrative chess habit, she sparks to life.
Heller’s performance is astounding, a world-weary match for Taylor-Joy’s anxious curiosity.
Alma becomes a supportive manager, yet there’s something overly vicarious in her interest.
She’s being a good mother and turning a teenager into her drinking buddy.
Everyone knows how to play chess, right?
We’ve all seenThe Wire?
Frank has a lot of director-y fun staging Beth’s duels.
There are split-screens, fourth-wall staring contests, time-lapse montages of pieces moving.
Taylor-Joy’s hands move so fast, I kept rewinding to figure out if the video was sped up.
(I think it’s just gusto.)
I enjoyed the wonkish specificity of Beth’s strategic evolution from blitzkrieg attack to patient lateral defense.
The important games are always a spiritual dual, elaborate flirtation, and/or a private reckoning with flashback sorrow.
What works better is how the miniseries brings the whole chess subculture to life.
It’s an environment of cerebral swagger, diffident competitiveness, and geek love.
Her recent work has edged into droll comedy.
All that and more comes into play here.
Bad, digital effects, bad!
The story is literally about an ingenue rising to global fame.
The king might be in trouble.
Fortunately, the queen has all the best moves.B
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