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
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want to comment on this film
