The Queen’s Gambit is a ferocious chess series, intended to put constant pressure on the opponent. It is up to the opposing player to correctly put up its defenses and avoid the attacks. When under pressure, Elizabeth Harmon faces her greatest challenges both on and off the board.
Released as a Netflix adaptation of the 1983 novel, The Queen’s Gambit, pays homage to chess as an old and formidable game that can be won by anyone, man or woman. The bildungsroman follows the story of orphan Elizabeth Harmon, played by Anna Taylor-Joy, as she navigates her way through life battling gender oppression, emotional stress and addiction.
The story unfolds as Elizabeth “Beth” Harmon is taken to an orphanage for girls after she survives a car crash that took her single mother. Alone in the world, she finds an amusing curiosity in watching the janitor play chess in the basement. The janitor, Mr. Shaibel, teaches Beth so that she is able to win chess games against high school students at the age of nine.
The orphanage introduces a tranquilizing drug that keeps the girls calm and allows Beth to hallucinate the chessboard on her ceiling. Engulfed with this feeling and state of mind, Beth begins to rely on pills to keep a hazy state to visualize premature movements of the chess pieces.
Beth is finally adopted by a codependent mother and an absentee father, who ends up leaving the two women for work. When Alma, the mother, learns about the rewards of tournaments, she is althemore willing for Beth to continue chess. Through their travels to chess tournaments the mother-daughter duo develop a close relationship and find comfort through each other that neither of them have experienced before. Beth gains the respect of her opponents as she is quick to force their losses. She quickly climbs the ranks and is acknowledged as the young woman who loves to win a man’s game.
In her teenage years, Beth develops a dependence on the hallucinogen and a taste for alcohol. As she gains access to cigarettes, alcohol, and other stimulants she relies on them to take away her stress, her pain, and the emotional block she has on her heart. The storyline reveals pieces of her traumatic childhood as she is faced with another worldly pressure. She spirals down into a hole she “has dug for herself,” and it is not until she finds comfort in the friends whom she’s met along the way that she is able to pick herself back up from the ditches and get her head in the game. The series wrapped up into a full circle as Beth realizes that she has never been an orphan with the love she’s received from the people around her.
The Queen’s Gambit is an undemanding, slow watch that pulls you into the plot and characters. The character development is astounding, as you can clearly see the dynamism of every character as an individual, without taking too much focus off the protagonist. Set in the Cold War era, it makes the current generation of Netflix watchers gain an understanding of the culture and lifestyle of an orphan, a woman, and a mother. This series had me continuously pressing the “next episode” button at the end of each hour, and had me begging for more. It was truly a heartwarming yet heartwrenching series to watch and it is no surprise that it sits at the top of the popular charts.