The Queen's Gambit: Netflix's short but mighty miniseries
By: Jailyn Mitchell
The Queen’s Gambit, based on the book "The Queen’s Gambit" by Walter Tevis, was released as a Netflix Original on Oct. 23. The show took place in Kentucky, beginning in the mid-1950s and continued through the 1960s, following an orphaned girl, named Beth Harmon played by Anya Taylor-Joy, turned chess prodigy on her rise to stardom in the chess world. It was created for Netflix by Scott Frank and Allan Scott, who also wrote and directed it. Scott Frank is an American screenwriter, film director and author who received two Oscar nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for Out of Sight (1998) and Logan (2017). Allan Scott (born Allan Shiach) is a Scottish screenwriter and producer nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film and Genie Award for his 1997 film Regeneration. He was also the winner of the Edgar Award (1976) and Writers’ Guild Award (1978).
At the age of nine, Beth Harmon was sent to a Catholic orphanage in Lexington, Ky. after the untimely passing of her mother. While living in this orphanage, she was taught the art of chess by the custodian, Mr. Shaibel. In the orphanage, the children were given tranquilizer pills daily, very common in the 1950's. This quickly turned into an addiction of Beth’s as she found that it helped her visualization of chess matches. A few later, Beth is adopted by Alma Wheatley and her husband at the age of 15. In the process of adjusting to her new surroundings, Beth began entering local chess tournaments. While at these tournaments, Beth manages to make friends with other chess players, including former KY state champion Harry Beltik, gifted yet arrogant chess prodigy Benny Watts, and journalist, photographer and chess player D.L. Townes. While Alma was concerned about Beth playing in these chess tournaments, once she witnessed the financial benefits of Beth’s successes, she quickly adapted to their new lifestyle. On her adventure of becoming a world-renowned chess player, she struggled with emotional problems and drug and alcohol dependence.
The series starts with the sad reality of Beth’s mother’s passing as she sits in the back of a car bound for the orphanage. Here, Beth was seen as a troubled child as she was not formally taught by her gypsy-styled mother. She had issues comprehending the lessons and would skip classes to take lessons with Mr. Shaibel in the orphanage basement. While taking the tranquilizer pills, Harmon felt as though they enhanced her skills in chess. You are then brought along the journey Harmon goes through with addiction at a young age, leading to the orphanage director, Helen Deardorff, to withhold Harmon’s tranquilizer pills. This results in Harmon’s downward spiral into withdrawals. Without the pills, Harmon felt as though she could no longer harness her powers to play chess well. When she finally had enough of waiting, she snuck into the pharmacy and shoveled dozens of tranquilizer pills. After this incident, Deardorff never allowed Harmon to take the pills again.
Years had passed until she had finally been adopted at the age of 15 by Alma and Allston Wheatley, a troubled married couple on the brink of divorce. Alma thought that having a child in the house would add meaning to their lives, that was until she got the call that Allston had decided to abandon their family to live elsewhere. Though this new life and family wasn’t turning out as planned, Beth found chess tournaments to sign up to collect the prize money for the house and enhance her chess skills. While she was getting prepared for her first official match, Harmon found the same tranquilizer pills she was deprived of at the orphanage lying on Alma’s vanity. Harmon snuck a few out of the bottle and begin the same journey she was once on before. With these pills, Harmon felt as though she could finally win this chess tournament. However, Beth continued to take these pills because she saw them as the reason she won tournaments.
As Beth continued to win more and more of these tournaments in her local area, she began getting noticed more often, being invited to tournaments all over the country. Once Beth had gotten higher and higher in her ranking, over the years, the invitations for tournaments began coming from international hosts. Beth began going to dozens of countries to play some of the best players. However, Beth’s world came crashing down around her when on the same trip she had lost her first battle to Russian chess master, Borgov, she had suddenly lost her adopted mother Alma from what was assumed to be hepatitis. Beth’s life had taken a turn as she began experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
Slowly, as Beth got older, her passion for chess faded. As she sat in her now empty house, realizing how alone she was without Alma. She allowed her addiction to take control of her, stopped attending tournaments and refused to leave her house. Harry Beltik expressed his concern for Beth's spiral to the friends they shared. With the biggest tournament of Beth's career, they knew they had to get her back on track. With a lot of hard work, Beth overcomes not only her addiction but faced her biggest opponent.
While watching The Queen’s Gambit, I found myself becoming attached to Beth because of all of the hardship she has to endure. Match after match, I felt as though the cinematography was made to make the viewer feel as though they were along for the ride of Beth's life. As I witnessed Beth's downward decline, I had instantly felt empty as I tried to put myself in her shoes, losing not one but two mother figures in her life. Her spiral was almost anticipated, seeing as a loss so great would feel the same for anyone. While it is shorter than most series, the impact it creates is easily packed into its content. The creative team on this show really did an amazing job telling a large story in a miniature amount of time.