Genius on the Left, Lunatic on the Right

From playing chess in a gloomy basement to the Soviet Chess Championship, Beth Harmon has always been full of ambition and determination. The ‘60s, in which The Queen’s Gambit is set, is depicted as a time when the western world was coming to an era of diversity. Society moved towards accepting differing identities and respecting women. In The Queen’s Gambit, Beth Harmon, the protagonist, becomes the first woman who ranked in both the U.S and international chess tournaments. Audiences compliment her talents and strategies and appreciate the girl as the representation of the rising power of American chess players, but no one really digs into her life behind the glamorous surface. “Genius on the left, lunatic on the right” as a book written by Gao Ming, most accurately describes Beth. People who have the talents that are prevalent in the corresponding time are categorized as genius, and whose words and thoughts that are not accepted by the public are described as lunatic. Beth Harmon is indeed a genius, but behind that genius facade, she is broken, slowly losing her sanity. Although most people’s focus is on the sexism revealed in the film, there is much more to discuss in terms of the diligence and intention with which Beth performs. 

The life of geniuses is not as delightful as it seems to be, and Beth Harmon’s life is a typical example. The Queen’s Gambit portrays the sacrifices brought by the gifted skills including a broken family, the reliance on pills, and the overwhelming pressures. As said by Mr. Shaibel, “You got gifts, but it has a cost”. For Beth, she lost the opportunity of enjoying a simplistic and happy life. 

The series starts with Beth’s misfortune of losing her delirious mother who commits suicided through engaging in a car accident after finding out that her dad has started a new family. She becomes one of the orphans in The Methuen Home and encounters Mr. Shaibel, the janitor who enlightens her and introduces her life into a new chapter, the world of chess. During the rising action of the film, from ages nine to seventeen, Beth is always rewarded as “the chess prodigy” and has a fluctuating life in both her career and relationships. She is adopted and began her journey with her foster mother Alma Wheatley. When everyone including Beth herself is convinced that she will continue to shine on the chessboard and make it to the international tournament, the game in Mexico in 1966 resulted in a turning point -- the loss in the game with Kasparov and the death of Alma hit Beth as two falling boulders and forces her to look straight at the reality of her life which already corrupted in the very deep. Without the feeling of winning and the support from her mother, there is no desire or happiness inside of Beth but only the addiction to alcohol and pills. 

Since the time Beth first learns chess from Mr. Shaibel, she has relied on pills to help her visualize. The visions to her are a special skill leading her to the victory as she could visualize the chessboard on the ceiling and replay the game. When describing the process of her learning different strategies, the director has interspersed the scene of Beth getting pills from the orphanage wellness as a daily medicine. When the tranquilizer was banned by the federal government, Beth was only nine. She couldn’t bear the withdrawal effects so she sneaked into the wellness room. As Beth faints due to a large amount of intake of tranquilizer, she also falls into the abyss of obsession. She never succeeded in withdrawing the medicine throughout her life. 

The most impressive characteristic Beth Harmon performs in the film is the paranoid characteristic engraving in her actions. She is so passionate about defeating every opponent as it is the only aim of her playing chess. Her stubbornness and irritability results in her unique style of playing. Compared with defense, she focuses more on offense and will be upset by losing the dominant position in a game. Her life is dominated by the satisfaction of winning and regret in losing. Being a chess prodigy sacrifices her time and energy analyzing the game and drinking. When Alma is alive, she tells Beth chess is not all there is, but Beth responds pessimistically as “chess is what I know”. It is only a few days before Alma’s death when she teaches Beth living and growing are what should be important. 

One of those reasons which makes The Queen’s Gambit significant is that the film did not only reveal the tragedies of the genius but also presented the process of her overcoming the challenges. Her outcomes can be summarized as breaking stereotypes for sexism and U.S. individualism. To begin, almost everyone Beth meets, including Mr. Shaibel, Alma, and other chess players, would be skeptical of her preference in chess as “Girls do not play chess.” The first time she meets Mr. Ganz, the leader of the high school chess club, he gives her a doll as a gift, but she throws it in the garbage can right after. Unlike what people normally think, Beth doesn’t like dolls. Her figure portrayed in the film is against the stereotype of what females can do, which also implies that although society is coming to better awareness of equality, there are still undeniable biases. After the descriptions of Beth’s drunken life, the output from both Beth and other American players have made a breakthrough on the U.S’s position in the chess tournament in the 60s’. With the cooperation of her friends, she turns her sorrow to the motivation of winning Russian players, who are the dominators of the chess world. Hinted by the line of Harry Beltick who finds her after Beth goes back home without the accompaniment of Alma, he says:“If you want to play with the soviet, you need help.” Beth’s experiences tell her it is not the skills which the Americans lost to Russian, in fact, it is the U.S individualism that causes the lack of collaboration behind the chessboard. In the last game in the film, Beth plays against Kasparov, the Russian player who once defeated her. All her friends she met from the beginning of her chess career are willingly helping Beth. Without Beth’s request, they call her from New York about all the possible ways of how the rest of the game can go. As a result, Beth is more confident in facing Kasparov, and dealing with the new changes becomes easier. The splendor of the last game belongs to Beth and everyone who accompanies her. 

The Queen’s Gambit as a heroine film demonstrates the struggles which a prodigy experiences. In the eyes of the public, she is wrapped up in the clothes of a glamorous genius who succeeds in her career. However, if one can take a look inside her life, one will realize that she is collapsing slowly and toxically. As Beth Harmon is enlightened since nine years old and has continued to shine on the stage of chess for years, her personal life and background turns out to be the sacrifices for her talents ---- a broken family, addiction to pills and alcohol, and the overwhelming pressures which occupy almost all her free time. Beth Harmon spends tons of effort to overcome those stereotypes about her sex and nationality with the help of her friends. Throughout the film, it covers Beth’s lifetime from nine to twenty-three. Her smile and rigid eyes have never changed. Beth Harmon uses her actions to show the public that stereotypes were meant to break and maybe one day, a lunatic can be recognized to the left.