The Queen’s Gambit: On Loneliness

The critical response to Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit has been overwhelmingly positive; in fact, the general consensus has been, “Wow, that was very good.” The limited series has maintained a 100 percent fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics are stringing together adjectives of praise all to mean really good, really well done. This is sportsmanship like that of chess in the response to the show, viewers merely respecting the craft and quality of the series, a handshake after a well-played match. Scott Frank’s adaptation of the novel is faithful and innovative, using a substantial amount of direct dialogue from Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel while expanding the sparse poetry of Tevis’ prose and details to an expansive, stunning drama. Moses Ingram and Marielle Heller shine in the complexity of their maternal figures in Beth’s life. Anya Taylor-Joy once again proves her owl-eyed power with confidence in her embodiment of Beth Harmon. She’s utterly dynamic, magnetic. She has that shining quality of old Hollywood stars in that you feel lucky that she's on your screen. Taylor-Joy’s awkward grace in giving personality flourishes to pawn movement and inhabiting the most killer confidence walk (she transforms this walk for every character, i.e Emma’s queenly and a little devious walks about Highbury in this year’s EMMA) are nuances that liven the character’s internality to screen. Simultaneously, she captures Beth's desperation to win and the inextricable ties of chess and her addiction to tranquilizing pills and later alcohol in order to endure the world outside 64 squares of rooks and regals. The show makes chess thrilling and sexy all at once, two things no one expects chess to be. It’s ‘let’s make this complicated’ checkers, for crying out loud. See, even I went all critic on you just to say that it was very good. I can’t help it, it’s so very good. So good, it feels like truth instead of fiction. The truth of human feeling is so well captured and the details of the chess world are meticulously tuned to reality, but to me, the clarient truth that The Queen Gambit portrays is the fact of loneliness throughout Beth’s journey.

The term “Queen’s Gambit,” is a chess opening, referring to the initial moves made by the player on the board, and the opening of the entire series is Beth in scrambles, throwing tall Parisian curtains open, crawling to find her shoes, swallowing a pill washed down with liquor (Oh, but please note the perfectly winged-eyeliner), cursing while running to play the top chess player in the world, the Russian, Borgov. We quickly launch into the backstory of young Beth Harmon at the car crash of her mother’s death, leaving her an orphan. She is sent to Methuen Home for orphaned children in Mount Sterling, Kentucky, where the children are given two tranquilizing pills “to even their disposition,” along with daily vitamins (giving these types of pills to children was not yet outlawed in the mid-1950s, the pills being a modern-day equivalent to valium). Here, Beth meets Jolene, the oldest of the girls, and the only Black girl. Jolene advises Beth to save the green tranquilizing pills to take at night, shortly after Beth begins to stockpile saved pills, dependent on them to help her sleep. They lull her with their “sweet chemistry.” Jolene becomes a semi-maternal figure in befriending Beth, taking care of her because Jolene has no one to take care of her. They find solace in each other. Mr. Shaibel, too, is a lonely character, playing chess against himself in the basement. Beth becomes increasingly curious about Mr. Shaibel’s game on visits to the basement to beat the chalkboard erasers clean, but instead beats the janitor at his beloved game. Yet this tradition gives both Beth and Mr. Shaibel a little sense of community at Methuen. He invites the local high school chess club teacher to play her, he opens the door for her pursuit of chess as an ambition for her to take down sweaty high school teacher’s rooks and walk through. (Do I know what a rook even is? No, of course I don’t. But because it’s such a good word, I will continue to use it.) In the forlorn place of Methuen, Beth finds pockets of kinship in Jolene and Mr. Shaibel, and also kinship in the little green pills, but ultimately in the game of chess.

In Beth’s adoption by the Wheatley’s at age thirteen, she finds a bedroom all to herself and a martinied Mrs. Wheatley companionless as well. Over time, Beth and Mrs. Wheatley’s relationship progresses to something resembling familial love. Mr. Wheatley is uninterested in Beth just as he is uninterested in his marriage. Seemingly, he agreed to adopt her in efforts to provide Mrs. Wheatley someone else to complain to and lunch with. Beth lacks community at school in ridiculous groups that the girls participate in, like the Apple Pis, or whatever junior high sorority dominates the social groups. But at home, Mrs. Wheatley is frequently ill and frequently drinking. She asks Beth to fulfill sedative prescriptions in which Beth collects a portion of the pills for herself and discovers that chess lives in a world outside the basement and her bedroom ceiling, but that the real world offers magazines for chess (!) and tournaments for chess (!). She enlists in the state tournament and crushes on a handsome player, affectionately known as Townes, but defeats him (of course). In between matches she starts her period for the first time, because again, she is a thirteen year old girl, then defeats master Harry Beltick to his begrudgement. In this Kentucky victory and earning of prize money, Mrs. Wheatley takes an interest in Beth’s playing, “I had no idea that you could win money playing chess,” she exclaims with a sly smile. Mr. Wheatley calls his wife to say he’s moving to Denver without her. Effectively, Mrs Wheatley makes a deal with Beth that she will become a mother to her (and manager) if she promises to stay away from Denver. Beth promises. They make an official pact, a metaphorical shaking of hands. They promise to belong to one another because others have ceased to belong to them. It’s a partnership, Mrs. Wheatley arranges the travel to tournaments and calls the high school to claim Beth has mono; Beth plays chess and offers a portion of her winnings to her mother. The loneliness of each of the women finds home in this oddball business partnership.

They go to the U.S Open in which Beth excels, forcing player after player to resign until the final match with the former child chess prodigy turned Indiana Jones cosplay lover, Benny Watts (the hat, the coat, come on) in which they tie and are named co-champions. Beth hates this, a draw is not a victory. She’s obsessed, only interested in proving she is the very best there is, not about the same as some other guy who is also very good. She’s no longer a prodigy either, now in high school taking Russian at night class (yes, to best the Russian chess player) and joins a party of college students from her class for a classic coming-of age experience filled weekend that ends with the others leaving town, allowing Beth to stay at the house for the weekend. She smokes, and she drinks, learning how to handle her alcohol. She cleans the house, she makes eggs. She revels in this adolescent independence, “She was alone, and she liked it. It was the way that she had learned everything important in her life,” when felt positively, this is her introversion’s bliss. Later, this habit becomes destructive in that during painful periods, she stays up late drinking, relying on the tranquilizing pills in order to survive both the day and the night. (Oh, but we get the incredible drunken downward spiral dance sequence of Beth in that purple-pink cardigan and underwear to Shocking Blue’s “Venus,” that’s better than any razor commercial ever.) This self-satisfaction twists into hate when she is not successful. It’s not just life she’s trying to survive, but she’s trying to survive herself. For the addiction is not entirely about the pills or the booze, but the addiction to success.

In episode four we have our protagonist CRISIS (it’s textbook people) when Beth loses to Borgov and loses her mother to hepatitis as well. She’s unsuccessful and familyless, arriving at the home that used to be shared when Harry Beltick calls. He wants to talk chess strategy (and maybe kiss a little, his fingers are crossed) but mostly, he wants to help. She invites him to stay at the house while he is in town, because, well, she’s lonely. But their studying helps her abandon the pills and beer, too, for it's her ambition that is the strongest force within her. They grow into a domestic pair of friends that, in attempts to be romantic, are hollow, so he leaves to move into an apartment closer to the college.

Now, she’s alone again, “She was alone in the house, her stomach was in a knot, and she did not know any place to go. There were no movies she wanted to see or people she wanted to call; there was nothing she wanted to read,” which if I’m honest, could sound like an accurate description of my Fall semester this year. This is of course why I wanted to write about loneliness and why this show seeped into my very cells the week I watched it. I’ve also used ambition as an isolation technique too, in writing, writing, writing to fill my loneliness. For Beth, chess is an outlet for coping with herself, a way to be accepted by this elite community, yes, but to be accepted by herself through accomplishment. She equates winning with love, because chess is really the thing that loves her back. In an interview with Rita Skeeter after the big Kentucky win, she said that chess isn't just math or competitive to her, but that it’s beautiful. It’s artistic. She feels security on the chess board, she says, “I feel safe in an entire world of just 64 squares.” This is her realm of confidence.

Sure, this show explores the loneliness of a particular genius in the age old it-is-lonely-at-the-top way, but it fosters Beth's talent through community: in studying with Harry, she gets better. Then she moves to New York to study with Benny Watts, speed-chessing into the twilight hours until she outplays him, betting on her own victory, him shoveling out twenty after twenty after her wins. (This speed chess is hella tense, because Benny is really attracted to Beth in her swift wins. They have a fling.) Then, she plays in Paris wearing the chicest outfits with subtle checks as a clothing motif to mimic the chess board. The clothing journey throughout the series showcases how impressionable Beth is in noticing different versions of cool from the Shocking Blue girls intense eye makeup to the sleek, Parisian elegance to Audrey Hepburn black turtlenecks—all in search of identity, all in search of her power look, a self-transformation. It's in Paris that she first rematches with Borgov; this is the opening sequence of the show, of a wild night and her hallway running to the match that we return to in episode six. She loses, that self-destruction of the night before is too much for her to overcome against the robotic Borgov, he’s like playing on a computer and her hangover is too strong to match his mechanism. Again, she spirals, only jolted back to life by a surprise visit from Jolene. She’s inspired to rematch Borgov again in Russia, but strapped for cash. Jolene loans her money and courage to fly to Russia to represent the U.S in the world championship. Again, she is bolstered by the support of a friend.

She defeats the obstacle matches and will face Borgov for the third time. Townes is in Russia for reporting; he stays with her, stirring belief in her into her morning coffee. Then we get a tear-up moment from me in the audience when Harry, Benny, and all the chess bros call Beth to wish her good luck and talk through intense strategy that will secure Beth the advantage over Borgov. These men love her and want her to succeed! I cry! Eventually, she Cold Wars Russia in sending her queen to the freaking moon first, defeating the Soviet’s dog, forcing him to resign. Handshake. She. Did. It. Ultimately, this obsession, fascination with chess is first her outlet for purposefulness in the face of loneliness but becomes a beautiful outlet for community. In the cab back to the airport, she has the driver let her out. Alone, she walks through Moscow, buttoning her white coat and adjusting her hat, the queen of the chess board, to challenge a local chess player at a pickup game, because now that she proved her genius to herself and the world, she can return to chess merely as her first love. We as an audience resign that yes, this series is indeed very good. I’ll shake on it.