The Luzhin Defence
UK/France/Italy/Hungary 2000
Reviewed by Geoffrey Macnab
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Italy, the 20s. Russian grandmaster Alexander Luzhin arrives at a hotel to prepare for a chess tournament. His eccentric behaviour intrigues Natalia, a young woman staying at the hotel with her mother. Although she is being courted by Stassard, a young count, Natalia begins to have an affair with Luzhin; the couple make plans to marry.
There are flashbacks to Luzhin's childhood. He received little affection from his parents. Chess was the only field in which he excelled. His father gave him up into the care of Valentinov, a chess coach determined to exploit his genius. Valentinov, in turn, abandoned him when Luzhin's abilities as a player waned.
Luzhin gets to the final of the chess tournament where he is to play an Italian grandmaster (now managed by Valentinov) for the world championship. Their match is adjourned. Luzhin is kidnapped by one of Valentinov's henchmen and suffers a nervous breakdown. The doctors tell him that if he plays any more chess, it will kill him. He recuperates and prepares for his marriage to Natalia. En route to the wedding, he is again apprehended by Valentinov, who is determined that he finish his match against the Italian. Luzhin escapes, but his health is shattered. He commits suicide. Natalia finds papers which contain the moves he planned to make against the Italian. The Italian agrees to finish the match with Natalia playing Luzhin's pieces. Thanks to "the Luzhin Defence," she wins.
Review
After tackling Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway (1925) in her first English language film, Dutch director Marleen Gorris has adapted a work by another key figure of modernist literature, Vladimir Nabokov's The Defence, translated into English by the Russian-born writer in 1964 from his 1930 novel The Luzhin Defence. Just as Mrs Dalloway flitted between past and present, the new film skips between generations (there are flashbacks to the hero's childhood); it is a costume drama, then, but not one straitjacketed by chronology. Luzhin, the dishevelled chess grandmaster reluctantly competing for the world-championship title, also brings to mind Septimus, the war veteran suffering from hallucinations in Mrs Dalloway. Both are unstable characters who bring discord to the polite, upper-class society that surrounds them.
Unfortunately, The Luzhin Defence is less sure-footed than its predecessor. Early on the film seems to be shaping up as a stodgy, naturalistic period melodrama, complete with picture-postcard views of idyllic Italian scenery and snapshots of snobbish guests at the hotel where Luzhin is competing. The interludes showing Luzhin as a boy in Russia, however, look as if they belong to a different, much more sombre film.
Gorris does manage the unlikely feat of making the chess matches visually exciting. During Luzhin's games, she makes us aware that the clock is ticking round and shows the players working themselves into a nervous frenzy. Luzhin moves his pieces with outrageous flamboyance. As the tournament progresses, the film-making becomes ever more stylised: Gorris even throws in an overblown montage sequence, cutting between images of Luzhin at the board with shots of him making love to his fiancée Natalia. There is also an absurdly cornball ending - the kind you'd expect in a conventional sports movie - in which he becomes champion posthumously, thanks to a move which every other expert had overlooked.
John Turturro plays Luzhin as a Chaplinesque figure; he dresses like a tramp, carries a stick and has a bow-legged walk. Emily Watson's Natalia, appropriately enough, is just the sort of sweet-natured, demure type Chaplin cast as the romantic interest in his films. As in the novel, both are easy to warm to; Nabokov called Natalia "my gentle young lady" and wrote of Luzhin: "There is something in him that transcends both the coarseness of his grey flesh and the sterility of his recondite genius."
Despite his clowning, there is an intensity about Turturro's performance which nothing else in the film matches. Muttering, self-obsessed, he hardly notices the world around him. Forced to choose between chess and Natalia, he is left in limbo: if he stops playing, he will preserve his good health, but without the game, his life is meaningless. As a study of Luzhin, the film stands as a cautionary tale about the plight of prodigies whose lives revolve around a single pole. Luzhin is a victim, spurned in turn by his parents and by his manager Valentinov, who dismisses him with the devastating put-down: "You're never going to be more than you are and what you are is not good enough." Even without them, he still prospers. What gives him the edge is his imagination. Unfortunately, Gorris' rather ponderous film shows little of the recklessness or ingenuity with which its protagonist plays his chess.
Credits
- Director
- Marleen Gorris
- Producers
- Caroline Wood
- Stephen Evans
- Louis Becker
- Philippe Guez
- Screenplay
- Peter Berry
- Based on the novel by
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Director of Photography
- Bernard Lutic
- Editor
- Michaël Reichwein
- Production Designer
- Tony Burrough
- Music/Music Conductor/Orchestrations
- Alexandre Desplat
- ©Renaissance Films/ ICE3/France 3 Cinéma/ Lantia Cinema & Audiovisivi/Magic
- Media
- Production Companies
- Renaissance Films and Clear Blue Sky Productions present a Renaissance/ICE3 production in association with
- Lantia Cinema/Magic Media/France 3 Cinéma
- Executive Producer
- Jody Patton
- Co-producers
- Leo Pescarolo
- Eric Robison
- Peter Barbalics
- Production Associate
- Ildikó Kemény
- Production Co-ordinators
- Nathalie Tanner
- Anita Tomaselli
- Gabriella Csoma
- Production Managers
- Rosanna Roditi
- László Sipos
- Unit Production Manager
- Ferenc Beres
- Unit Managers
- Mark Mostyn
- Paolo Rosada
- Laszlo Lakatos
- Location Managers
- Fabio Vianello
- Tamás Guba
- Post-production Supervisors
- Maria Walker
- Fleur Fontaine
- Assistant Directors
- Tommy Gormley
- Sarah Purser
- Tamas Mink
- Aoife Thunder
- Italy:
- Bojana Sutic
- Hungary:
- Gábor Gajdos
- Script Supervisors
- Elizabeth West
- Sophie Thévenet Becker
- Casting
- Director:
- Celestia Fox
- Italian Director:
- Adriana Sabbatini
- ADR Voice:
- Louis Elman
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Ferenc Ormos
- Technicians:
- Alfredo Spadaro
- Massimo Ticchiati
- Gyorgy Solymosi
- Zsolt Furedi
- Pyrotechnics Technical Adviser
- Gyula Krasnyansky
- Graphic Designer
- Shirley Robinson
- Supervising Art Director
- John Hill
- Supervising Set Decorator
- Dominic Smithers
- Costume Designer
- Jany Temime
- Wardrobe Master
- György Homonnay
- Hair/Make-up Designer
- RoseAnn Samuel
- Make-up/Hair Artists
- Lesley Noble
- Elaine Browne
- Allison Sing
- Additional Make-up/Hair
- Cristiana Bertini
- Carla Ruffert
- Rozália Szegedi
- Harisa Centani
- Annamaria Ginnoto
- Lamberto Deli
- Titles/Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Music Performed by
- The London Symphony Orchestra
- Piano Solo:
- Simon Chamberlain
- Music Recordist/Mixer
- John Timperley
- Dance Instructor
- Pierre Loy
- Soundtrack
- Shostakovich's "Waltz 2 from Suite for Jazz Orchestra No 2" -- Royal Concert Gebouw Orchestra
- Production Sound Mixer
- Peter Glossop
- Recordists
- Alan Sutcliffe
- Harry Naylor
- Re-recording Mixer
- Craig Irving
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Richard Fettes
- Dialogue Editor
- Colin Ritchie
- ADR
- Mixer:
- John Bateman
- Editor:
- Michael Crouch
- Foley
- Artists:
- Ruth Sullivan
- Lionel Selwyn
- Mixer:
- John Bateman
- Editor:
- Robert Gavin
- Chess Consultant
- John Speelman
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- David Ambrosi
- Ricardo Mioni
- Cast
- John Turturro
- Alexander Luzhin
- Emily Watson
- Natalia
- Geraldine James
- Vera
- Stuart Wilson
- Valentinov
- Christopher Thompson
- Stassard
- Fabio Sartor
- Turati
- Peter Blythe
- Ilya
- Orla Brady
- Anna
- Mark Tandy
- Luzhin's father
- Kelly Hunter
- Luzhin's mother
- Alexander Hunting
- young Luzhin
- Alfredo Pea
- Fabio Pasquini
- officials
- Luigi Petrucci
- Santucci
- Carlo Greco
- hotel manager
- Massimo Sarchielli
- tailor
- Luca Foggiano
- Antonio Carli
- David Ambrosi
- fascists
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Entertainment Film Distributors Ltd
- 9,804 feet
- 108 minutes 57 seconds
- Dolby SR
- In Colour