Chess in movies is never just about chess. It’s about geopolitics, as in Pawn Sacrifice, or self-actualization, as in Queen to Play, or the tribulations of coming of age, as in Searching for Bobby Fischer. And in the greatest of all chess films, The Seventh Seal, it’s literally a matter of life and death.
For a game so pensive, cerebral and seemingly un-cinematic, it’s turned up a lot in our movies in a way that other iconic, metaphor-inspiring games like backgammon and Parcheesi have not. Having never learned chess, I should concede that I’m a clueless outsider observing these rarefied movie worlds, but I think its celluloid popularity has something to do with the timed tension of the game — the visual possibilities inherent in the ticking clock, the elegant yet martial movements and the concentrated gazes — as well as its royal cachet: It’s a game of kings, queens, bishops and knights.
And as Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, a film as lovely as a rainbow after a spring shower, reminds us, it’s also a game that anyone can master, regardless of gender, color or class. It personifies chess as a democratic equalizer.
The movie’s fact-based story, culled from an ESPN-published book, charts the ascension of Ugandan player Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga, in an extraordinary debut performance) from the slum community of Katwe to the international chess stage. In 2007, in a teeming, communal Kampala, her life is hot, flat and crowded. Fatherless from age 3, she lives in a cramped dwelling with her mother (Lupita Nyong’o) and three siblings. Unable to afford schooling, they survive day to day on the sale of maize.
When Phiona and her younger brother discover the game, at an underground club run by kind local minister Robert Katende (David Oyelowo), the unwashed adolescent is mocked by her peers. But she cleans herself up and returns to the boards, ultimately receiving sage advice from Robert and fellow players that goes beyond the 64 squares. When speaking about the necessity to forecast movements in chess, Robert tells his players “follow your plans, and you will all find safe squares.” “In chess, the small one can become the big one; that’s why I like it,” adds a pint-sized dreamer. “Such aggressiveness in a girl is quite special,” a chess authority proclaims later, about Phiona’s increasingly ruthless strategy.
If these trailer bites sound a bit on the nose, it’s because William Wheeler’s screenplay isn’t the film’s strongest attribute. While it’s nice to hear the characters lapse into the occasional Swahili, the predominantly English dialogue borders on the clumsy, never attaining the naturalism it should.
Luckily for us, Nair’s direction is genuine and wondrous, enough to make up for any linguistic shortcomings. With its close-knit atmosphere and concentration of regional detail, Queen of Katwe is the brighter B-side to Nair’s docu-style breakthrough Salaam Bombay!, her unforgettable bildungsroman set in India’s slums. It takes a director not only well-versed in African cultures but also skilled in the direction of children to make this movie work, and Nair has generous experience with both. Her cast of youngsters — the eager pawns to the film’s regal leads — inhabit their characters with uninhibited affection, exhibiting behaviors too endearing to script.
As Phiona graduates from makeshift boards with bottle-cap pieces to international chess Olympiads, Queen of Katwe adopts the ups, downs, beats and rhymes of an underdog sports movie, one gloriously free of full-body contact. Messages about learning from life’s humiliations, eschewing pride when necessary, and valuing personal happiness over monetary comfort coalesce in the intimate battle scenes, which will rivet audience members from grandmasters to nonplayers.
As with any good chess film, the swift musicality of clicks and clacks on wood and marble achieve a Zen-like rhythm. It’s what transcendence sounds like.
QUEEN OF KATWE. Director: Mira Nair; Cast: Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o, Martin Kabanza, Taryn Kyaze, Ivan Jacobo; Distributor: Disney; Rating: PG; Opens: Friday at most area theaters