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CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival

CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival

CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival

Stefan Zweig’s final work, a novella titled The Royal Game, was written in 1941-1942 while the author was living in exile in Brazil, having fled his home country of Austria due to the rise of National Socialism and the insidious anti-Semitism that came with it. But for so many great writers, artists, and intellectuals of the Weimar period, exile was its own form of torture; it was hard for them to keep living and working in a foreign, often unwelcoming place while knowing that they would likely never see their beloved homeland ever again — and if they did, it would be irrevocably changed by the horrors inflicted by the Nazis.

Zweig was one of them; the day after he sent the manuscript of The Royal Game off to his publishers, he and his wife took a fatal dose of sleeping pills. Yet his work has continued to live on in the decades since his tragic death, including The Royal Game. The latest screen adaptation, Chess Story — one of the alternate titles of Zweig’s book — tells a compelling tale of the things people do to survive and the damage that they carry with them afterward. Yet despite boasting great performances and lavish production values, the film also feels unnecessarily messy, as though its makers were somewhat overwhelmed by the prospect of adapting such a lauded piece of literature.

The Most Dangerous Game

Austrian lawyer Josef Bartok (Oliver Masucci) lives a glamorous, comfortable life in Vienna with his wife, Anna (Birgit Minichmayr), one that abruptly comes to an end with Germany’s annexation of Austria in 1938. Bartok prepares to flee to the United States, but before he can do so, he is captured and brought to the Hotel Metropole — once one of the most luxurious hotels in the city, now the headquarters of the Gestapo.

CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival
source: Film Movement

Bartok has served as an asset manager to various members of the Austrian aristocracy; local Gestapo leader Franz-Josef Böhm (Albrecht Schuch) wants Bartok to give him access to their bank accounts so that the assets can be seized by the Nazis. Naturally, Bartok refuses. What follows are days, then weeks, then months in solitary confinement. The emotional and mental strain placed on Bartok is extreme enough for him to start to crack — that is, until one day he manages to steal a book of famous chess games.

Bartok becomes obsessed with the book, creating a makeshift chess board on his bathroom floor and, by playing endless games against himself, escaping into another world. But while Bartok’s fanatical devotion to the game may help him withstand Böhm’s demands, it nonetheless takes a severe toll on his mental health — one that may be irreparable.

Bitter Victory

The majority of Zweig’s novella takes place on a ship from New York to Buenos Aires, where a chess champion named Mirko Czentovic faces off in a game against a mysterious Dr. B., who relates the story of his imprisonment by the Gestapo, his escape into chess, and his eventual psychological breakdown. Chess Story does not neglect that part of the story; it begins with Bartok embarking on his journey and cuts back and forth in time as memories of his imprisonment haunt him throughout the voyage, culminating in a chess battle with Czentovic (also played by Schuch) that devolves into a nightmare.

CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival
source: Film Movement

Yet these scenes on board the boat pale in comparison with the film’s flashback scenes, in which an increasingly unraveling Bartok repeatedly faces off against Böhm and refuses to give in. Masucci, who may be best known outside of Germany for his role on Netflix’s science-fiction drama Dark, brilliantly depicts Bartok’s gradual descent into madness, embodying both the classy, confident lawyer he is at the beginning of the film and the empty shell of a man he becomes with equal skill. And as played by Schuch — currently one of Germany’s most talented and most ubiquitous actors, most recently seen in Edward Berger’s acclaimed reimagining of All Quiet on the Western Front — Böhm is a perfect representative of what Hannah Arendt famously described as the banality of evil.

Reminiscent of Hans Landa, the character so memorably played by Christoph Waltz in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Böhm’s pleasant smile, calm voice, and single-minded focus on his job — to the point of saving Bartok from being killed by another Nazi so that those bank account numbers don’t die with him — are that of a member of upwardly-mobile middle-management. Even Böhm’s chosen method of torture for Bartok feels strangely genteel; by locking him away in a hotel room until his mind deteriorates from the enforced solitude, he is keeping his hands physically, if not metaphorically, clean. Yet when faced with Bartok’s continued, unexpected defiance, Böhm’s chilling politeness gradually devolves into dangerous frustration.

CHESS STORY: Playing For Survival
source: Film Movement

Watching Masucci and Schuch face off onscreen is thrilling; watching Bartok stumble around the ship and get coerced into playing chess is less so. These portions of the film drag despite the evocative atmosphere created by Thomas W. Kiennast’s cinematography, which makes the most of the sharp contrast between the comforting, golden lights of the ship’s interior and the stormy, misty sea outside. In attempting to convey Bartok’s disturbed, hallucinatory state, director Philipp Stölzl and screenwriter Eldar Grigorian only partially succeed; I understand what they were trying to do in the film’s most muddled, confused moments, but understanding those intentions is far different than finding them effective.

Conclusion:

Chess Story winds to a conclusion that differs from that in Zweig’s story, in that it reveals the light at the end of the tunnel that Zweig did not live to see — quite possibly the most heartbreaking thing about it.

Chess Story opens at the Quad Cinema in New York on January 13, 2023 before expanding to additional markets.


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