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Review

Turturro’s penchant for imbuing his characters with smoldering, manic intensity is well-used in his portrayal of Alexander Luzhin, a driven chess genius focused on the game to the exclusion of all else. His obsessive concentration has successfully blocked out those aspects of his life that he is ill-equipped to handle; but this protective bulwark is dangerously weakened by a sudden, unexpected arousal of the heart. Young Natalie is a lady of society, of means and expectations, whose family seeks a suitable marriage for her, in keeping with the rigid structural guidelines of the pre-WWI European elite. The disheveled, distracted Luzhin does not at all meet their standards. As Luzhin faces the chess match of his life, he must deal not only with the withering objections of Natalie’s family, but the machinations of his former mentor and exploiter, who has arrived at the tournament to sabotage the pupil who has surpassed him. Director Gorriss has once again vividly re-created an historic era while delineating distinct personalities and communicating oblique states of mind and unspoken social mores. A wonderfully developed and involving drama, based on the Nabokov novel.