| Chessplaying requires extraordinary concentration, so those who excel may think of nothing else until they encounter burnout. The Luzhin Defence, a British film based on the book Zashchita Luzhina (1930) by Vladimir Nabokov (translated into English as The Defence), focuses on Aleksandr Luzhin (played by John Turturro), who is a chess grandmaster about to enter a world chess competition in 1929. Luzhin has had a difficult life up to this point. As a boy (played by Alexander Hunting), he was reared in a tempestuous family of quarreling parents in St. Petersburg, so he developed an interest in chess to escape into a world where he could exercise his intelligence without the need to articulate words, which he presumed were nearly always to be hurtful. A child prodigy, he was discovered by a gentleman named Valentinov (played by Stuart Wilson), who mentored him for a decade after he came in third at a chess match in Lake Como, Italy, when he was ten years old. But, after fourteen years, Valentinov dumped him in Budapest when he believed that Luzhin would never achieve the top place in chess tournaments was unlikely because too much pressure in tournaments caused a breakdown in his mental capacity. The reason for the breakdown, as the film shows in several flashbacks, was due to a series of childhood traumas that haunted him. Nevertheless, the film does not begin with Luzhin. Instead, another exiled Russian, Natalia Katkova (played by Emily Watson), is by coincidence staying at the very hotel in Lake Como where the world chess tournament is to be held in a few days. For two weeks, she spends her time reading rather than socializing. Luzhin, the first competitor to arrive, is clearly an eccentric, largely unaware of his surroundings and his own disheveled demeanor. Then, Natalia’s aristocratic mother Vera (played by Geraldine James) arrives from their home in Berlin, hoping that her unmarried daughter will find a suitable husband. Vera spots the Comte de Stassard (played by Christopher Thompson), a handsome Frenchman, and tries to play matchmaker. One day, while Natalia is reading by the lake, Luzhin walks past her, and various objects fall out of holes in his pocket. She picks them up, gets Luzhin’s attention, and return the items to him. The following day, while Natalia is playing tennis, Luzhin declares out of the blue that he wants to marry her, a rather startling proposal, since neither know each other’s names. Natalia, who has strong maternal instincts and wants to assert her independence from her mother, decides to get better acquainted with the strange chessplayer, especially when her mother disapproves. Indeed, the body language of the disapproval provides comic relief in the middle of the film. Meanwhile, other chess competitors arrive, including Luzhin’s principal rival for the championship, Turati (played by Fabio Sartor). Valentinov is also present, now playing a Svengali role, as he accepts money from Turati on the understanding that he will arrange to put enough pressure on Luzhin that he will lose the contest, thus seeking to assuage his guilt by vindicating his earlier decision to abandon Luzhin. The story plays out, with Luzhin able to withstand pressure from Valentinov’s presence only because of his love affair with Natalia. Eventually, the tournament winds down to a match between Luzhin and Turati, which adjourns for the day when the clock runs out on an incomplete game. Valentinov then pays off a taxicab driver to drive Luzhin to a remote point, where he will be so disoriented that he will surely be unable to win. During the ride Luzhin is trying to solve the puzzle of the adjourned game, so he does not notice where the taxi is going. After he solves the puzzle, he gets out of the taxi, believing that he is at his hotel, and the taxi drives away, abandoning Luzhin, who then has a breakdown. Eventually discovered by some young men, he ends up in the hospital, where the doctor says that he must give up chess or he will die. Natalia convinces him to drop chess, he recovers enough to return to the hotel, and they plan a wedding. On the way to the wedding, Valentinov suddenly gets into the taxi with Luzhin and directs the driver to go to the chessmatch to finish the adjourned game. Luzhin then bolts from the taxi, falls on the street, and is nearly killed by an approaching auto. He then returns to his hotel room dazed, while Natalia and her parents await his presence at the wedding. Valentinov’s intervention and the fall into the street having brought on another breakdown, he recalls an earlier part of his life, when he sneaked from an upstairs window at home to play chess despite his father’s orders. Accordingly, he goes to the window of his hotel room and jumps, but this time to his death. After the funeral, Natalia goes over Luzhin’s possessions and encounters a scribbled note in the pocket of the suit that he last wore at the adjourned match. She asks the Comte de Stassard to explain the note. The Comte surmises that Luzhin wrote down chessmoves that would have defeated Turati in the suspended game. At the end of the film, the tournament is on again, with Natalia sitting in Luzhin’s seat, making a move (sacrifice of a rook to trap an escape route for the king) that defeats Turati. Luzhin has won posthumously. The extraordinary film is based in part on the life of chess grandmaster Curt von Bardeleben, who in 1924 took his own life in a similar manner (as have several major chessplayers in recent years). At last, thanks to Dutch director Marleen Gorris, the world of chess championships has come onto the screen, and we even see through fastforwarding Luzhin’s calculations of alternative lines of attack and defense, something that may cause chessplayers to run frame-by-frame advances of VHS versions of The Luzhin Defence. MH |