Thoughts on 'The Queen's Gambit'

REVIEW BY: ROBERT CHANDLER

THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT on Netflix is as good as everyone is saying. Scott Frank’s storytelling is clear and precise. It lands. 

Awareness of the series has spread mostly through word-of-mouth on social media and through Netflix’s recommendation algorithms. This is the future for movie marketing.

I love Isla Johnston’s performance as young Beth. And I like it that Alma, Beth’s adoptive mother, with whom she goes travelling for the tournaments, is played by Marielle Heller, who directed CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? and A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD, which I watched this evening.

A shout-out for Walter Tevis who wrote THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT novel. He also wrote THE HUSTLER and THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (the only one of his novels I have read.) That’s a remarkable impact on film with almost sixty years passing between Robert Rossen’s hustler in 1961 via Nic Roeg’s Bowie alien in 1976 to this beautiful chess series of 2020.