The strengths of The Luzhin Defense are its enigmatic plots and themes. The film maintains the same suspense of the high stakes games of chess and fills the screen with complex interrelationships between characters. All of its thematic gestures seem to feed off of each other, each adding another layer of depth. The film, for example, raises a subtle contrast between Luzhin’s brilliant capacity for strategy and his crippling psychological illnesses. This contrast plays out along the constant parallel between Luzhin’s life and chess games and richens the film’s ending.

The parallels between Luzhin’s life and his talent are physicalized in stunning landscapes that give the film’s Russian, Italian and American settings the feel of ornate life-size chessboards. There is, in fact, literally an ornate life-size chessboard right in front of the site of the chess tournament. Most of these landscapes, however, are much subtler—black and white tiled floors across which men and women walk deliberate patterns, rows of pillars arranged like pawns and carefully arrayed statues of kings, queens and their retinues of minions.

The only flaw in an otherwise fabulous film is the character of Luzhin. Though very endearing, he seems to be more or less the run-of-the-mill eccentric. Turturro plays the role powerfully and convincingly, but the character is nonetheless a little flat. Instead, it is Watson’s performance that steals the show with an original combination of grace, tenderness and intelligence. The Luzhin Defense is slated for release in theaters April 27.

The Luzhin Defence

directed by Marleen Gorris

starring John Turturro, Emily Watson

Clear Blue Sky Productions