+ interview with director Marleen Gorris
+ another review by Howard Hann
Defenceless
The ever paradoxical John Turturro is one of those
rare actors who makes you aware that he's acting, but
also makes it okay. Even when his performances appear
mannered or overwrought -- as they have more than once
in his work with the Cohen brothers -- they also
reveal some nuanced truth, an emotional little bit
that moves you, a detail of behavior that reminds you
of a real experience. While he's obviously smart and
sensitive, he can play dumb (no mean feat), as well as
intelligent, fretful, and hyper-self-conscious.
In Dutch director Marleen Gorris's The Luzhin Defence, Turturro plays Alexander Luzhin, a child
chess prodigy now grown up into a brilliant, twitchy,
socially inept, and occasionally charming grandmaster.
Written by Peter Berry, from Vladimir Nabokov's novel,
*The Defense*, the film is set in 1929, at an
exclusive Italian spa hosting a world championship
chess match: the Russian born Luzhin is one of the
favorites, and his principal adversary is the popular
Italian homeboy, a self-confidently swaggering movie
star of a grandmaster aptly named Turati (Fabio
Sartor).
This being a film by Marleen Gorris (A Question of Silence, 1982), The Luzhin Defence makes the match
an occasion for cultural and political inquiry: while
the wealthy hotel guests ooh and ahh at the orderly
and sometimes spectacular displays of intellectual
prowess, they are surrounded by Italian soldiers, who
practice drills in the background, a visual reminder
of the change about to come. These images also suggest
the actual unimportance of the drama that keeps the
match audience's rapt attention. Social hobnobbing,
playing tennis, and sipping cocktails on the veranda
are all well and good for those who can afford them,
but real life will soon intervene.
Living for the time being amid the upper-crusters who
find him simultaneously horrific and entrancing,
Luzhin wears shabby jackets, fidgets during meals, and
breaks out into odd ballroomish gyyrations for no
clear reason ("I dance a little," he admits
sheepishly). But his lack of fit doesn't bother him,
for he is relentlessly focused on his game, going over
moves and possibilities again and again. That focus
changes abruptly when he spots (and is spotted by) the
lovely Russian emigre Natalia (Emily Watson),
vacationing at the spa with her persnickety mother
Vera (Geraldine James). Even without exchanging a word
with her, he is smitten by Natalia's lithe form in
lacy white dresses, and sly smiles from across the
dining room, and so, he clambers across the great lawn
to ask her to marry him. At this point, you might
imagine that Natalia would be offended or just a
little surprised. But she's unruffled (and not a
little pleased that her mother *is* ruffled), and
informs her new suitor that she'll give him an answer
when she's had some time to think it over.
It's hard not to feel some affection for Luzhin: he's
such a lost puppy dog, so manifestly damaged and
needy. Though Natalia doesn't know the details, you
learn most every one of them, through flashbacks to
Luzhin's childhood, intercut with tense chess games
(boards shot at angles, the slap-slap of contestants
hitting their timer clocks, and even -- my favorite --
the pieces moving as if by themselves, in fast-motion,
emulating Luzhin's subjective vision of the board,
four and five moves at a time). Luzhin's obsession
with the game isn't just because he's good at it, but
because he was traumatized when his parents' marriage
collapses and his father (Mark Tandy) begins an affair
with his aunt (Orla Brady). More sensitive to the
child's concerns than either his mother or father, the
aunt distracts him by teaching him to play chess. When
Luzhin beats his dad at the game, the old man decides
to send him off to be trained by the evil,
exploitative, and utterly selfish Valentinov (Stuart
Wilson).
It's bad enough when, in a flashback, Valentinov
abandons Luzhin after the poor kid loses a match
(abandonment being one of Luzhin's several raw
nerves), but the film takes a turn that's just over
the top when Valentinov arrives in Italy. He decides,
apparently out of spitefulness, to ruin Luzhin's
chances for winning by harrassing him until he comes
undone: Valentinov stops short of twirling his
mustache, but his function is all too visible.
By this time, Natalia has decided that she will love
Luzhin, whom she describes as a "fascinating,
enigmatic, and attractive man"; she persuades her
skeptical mother and more lenient father (Peter
Blythe) to help with the wedding, even though he's
been called to Italy to take her in hand. Though they
note that Natalia has a history of taking in stray
dogs, they both agree at last to help with wedding
preparations.
More importantly, the insistent Natalia persuades
Luzhin that he can have a life with her, a life that
might involve chess, but that will be less sublimated
and more sensual. On one level, her scheme is
unselfish and grants her a moral ground in a crowd
where everyone else is scrambling: she wants to save
someone who patently needs saving. But on another
level, Natalia's shifting agenda is potentially shady.
If at first she is primarily interested in upsetting
her mother, the film suggests that Natalia becomes
invested in Luzhin's own aspirations, absorbing them
so as to play a game of her own, a match of wits and
power in which she is set against Valentinov. This
ambiguity makes Natalia pulse a bit, and makes her
good intentions less annoying than they might have
been. The novel's inevitable tragic ending is toned
down somewhat in the film by Natalia's determination
to achieve a moral order and very minor triumph over
the dastardly Valentinov, by symbolic means if nothing
else. But despite and because of those rich folks in
the foreground, the soldiers continue to lurk,
reminding you that disorder is unavoidable.
