Games People Play. - Review - movie review

National Review, May 14, 2001 by John Simon

Yet even from the movie it is obvious that Luzhin is a mini-Nabokov, similarly concentrated on and constricted by his art, and similarly unworldly. To quote Boyd again, "In devising chess problems, Nabokov discovered the intensity of cerebration he knew from composing poems, a concentration of mental rays sufficient to burn a hole through time itself." That last phrase is typical of the hyperboles Nabokov worshippers are prone to; nevertheless, it suggests the quality of Luzhin's that Natalia finds so attractive.

As written by Berry and enacted by John Turturro, however, Luzhin is ripe, nay, overripe for the loony bin. Turturro is an interesting actor because of his maniacal intensity, which, along with his extremely odd looks, makes him more suited to character parts than to the kind of leading man an attractive and seemingly normal young woman would fall madly in love with. Especially not if, as in the movie, he is a manifest freak, so that her wish to marry him casts doubt on Natalia's sanity as well. For example, in the novel, the young woman asks the chess-champion hero how long he has been playing; he answers, "Eighteen years, three months, and four days," which is bizarre enough. But only the worst idiot savant would reply, as in the movie, after examining his watch, "9,263 days, four hours, and five minutes."

Emily Watson does her usual quiet and intense best as Natalia, but she cannot make the preposterous believable either. Supporting parts are well cast but, again, crudely written. Natalia's mother (played by Geraldine James), though quite rightly objecting to the intended marriage, is turned into a figure of low comedy. Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), the chess coach and manager, erroneously gives up on Luzhin, booting him out. Later, realizing his mistake, he becomes Luzhin's nemesis, going to diabolical lengths to prevent him from winning the world championship against Turati, the Italian grandmaster. There are, to be sure, such demons in Nabokov's fictions, say, Laughter in the Dark and Lolita, but they are not so obvious about it.

The Luzhin Defence is prettily shot by Bernard Lutic against splendid backgrounds on Lake Como and in Hungary, nowadays the customary stand- in for old Russia. The chess-competition sequences are reasonably well staged, and the film does not bore. If only it could also be credible.