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The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

Posted By: Someonelse
The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

The Chess Players (1977)
DVD5 | ISO+MDS | NTSC 4:3 | 01:55:48 | 3,93 Gb
Audio: Urdu AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Art-house, Drama

Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi

Wazed Ali Shah is the ruler of one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The British, intent on controlling this rich country, have sent general Outram on a secret mission to clear the way for an annexation. While pressure is mounting amidst intrigue and political manoeuvres, Ali Shah composes poems and listens to music, secluded in his palace. The court is of no help, as exemplified by nobles Mir and Mirza, who, ignoring the situation of their country and all their duties towards their families, spend their days playing endless parties of chess.


Satyajit Ray's gently satiric parable The Chess Players reminds us that, in the days before America's machinations in Iraq, we had the British East India Company running roughshod in much same way in India. Ray opens his movie with a documentary-style recap of the Company's mid-19th century wheeling-dealing in Oudh, a wealthy province in northeastern India. The Company had Oudh's king, Wajid Ali Shah, by the balls: If the king agreed to finance the Company's regional ambitions, and even supply it with necessary troops, it wouldn't meddle in or usurp the king's power. By 1856, though, the British, eager to fatten their imperial coffers, broke their détente with King Wajid, and instructed their local operative, General Outram, to do whatever it takes to roll into Oudh and take charge.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

The Chess Players was something of a departure for Ray: Aside from its large budget—at least by Ray's standards—and use of popular Bombay actors, it was also his first and only foray into a culture and language outside his native Bengal, namely the Mogul, Urdu-speaking enclave of Lucknow, the capitol of Oudh. Yet, for all its challenges, Ray's adaptation feels as easy and assured as anything he ever made. And, while The Chess Players isn't as rich or provocative a character study as Ray's greatest works, it's a pleasurable showcase of his comic and dramatic sensibilities.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

Mirza (Sanjeev Kumar) and Meer (Saeed Jaffrey), two Lucknow noblemen, are so enamored of chess playing that they're oblivious to the political and domestic upheavals around them. While Mirza's wife wiles away in her bedroom, cross and neglected, Meer uses her husband's all-day devotion to chess playing as an opportunity for some cuckolding. These guys are too tuned-out, however, too buffoonish to pick up on these clues. Likewise, they blissfully shrug off rumors of the East India Company's troops imminently laying siege to their pleasure haven and deposing their king.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

In adapting Prem Chand's short story, Ray cleverly juxtaposes the chess players' quotidian pleasures of pompous banter and hookah smoking, all the while hunched over their ivory chess pieces, with scenes of General Outram (played with oily conviction by Richard Attenborough), as he deliberates with King Wajid (Amjad Khan), anxious to plant the Union Jack atop his palace, and expand the Queen's empire. While Ray stays true to King Wajid's reputation as a harem-happy sybarite, he also punches up his more sympathetic qualities: namely, that he's observantly religious, and a devout patron of dance, poetry, and music. With his mournful eyes and humble delivery, Amjad Khan ably appeals to our hearts, not least because we share his moral puzzlement over Outram's insidious maneuverings.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

The Chess Players takes its time to play out, but it gracefully holds our attention. Ray's camera may be purely functional, but it's not without a certain slyness that winks at the viewer every now and then: When Mirza leaves their chess game to tend to his distraught wife, warning Meer not to alter the position of the pieces, the camera watches as Meer's impatiently waits for his return. Finally, after checking for eavesdroppers in the hallway, he reaches in and does exactly what Mirza suspected he would. Mirza misses the act, but Ray's camera does not: Panning with him back into the parlor, the camera catches Meer from behind a slit in the drapery to spy his hand in flagrante. Those amusing touches, along with sharply observed gestures pointing to class differences and domestic disquiet, let us know that Ray's movies live between the lines, in those offhand but brilliantly revealing nuances of human behavior.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

Jaffrey's whimsical and doting Meer perfectly offsets Kumar's proud, boastful Mirza, and, as the political temperature of the story rises and their attempts to keep playing their game borders on the desperate and bungling, there's an antic glee to Ray's telling. The mannered goofiness of The Chess Players echoes the pastoral comedy of Days and Nights In the Forest while the Raj-era dancing-girl trappings recall the decidedly grim The Music Room. Finally, as their worlds as well as their friendship hang in the balance, we find ourselves wistful for Mirza and Meer's futures. For we realize that it's not ignorance but pure terror that keeps them from admitting their crumbling realities to themselves and clinging to a game, to a state of suspended denial. To a war that's only pretend.
The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

The Chess Players is a delight from beginning to end. Taking its cue from the origins of chess as a war-strategy training game, Ray builds two narrative strands in parallel: in the mid-1850s, a pair of idle aristocrats become obsessed by chess and play it all day long, oblivious to the collapse of their domestic relationships that it causes; and in the larger world outside, the scheming and strategy of the chess-board is played out in the real-life scheming of the East India Company as it attempts to manoeuvre the Nawab of Oudh from his throne and bring the state within British jurisdiction. The two plotlines are beautifully brought together at the end when, after hearing that Company troops have moved in and the Nawab has abdicated, the chess-playing friends change their board layout to the Western manner, which involves the king and queen changing their starting positions: "Move over, king. Make way for [queen] Victoria!"

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

There are fine performances all round: from Amjad Khan as the Nawab, whose infinitely delicate sensibilities lead to infinite puzzlement at the connivings of the less fastidious, to Richard Attenborough as the Company representative in Oudh whose job it is to unseat him, who manages to convey a genuine belief that the state needs to be better run, with an underlying realization that he has no right to do what he is doing. Sanjeev Kumar and Saeed Jaffrey, as the chess players Mirza and Mir, both have extremely expressive faces that can switch from blustering bonhomie to pained hurt, or from deadpan seriousness to quizzical amusement, in a heartbeat. Jaffrey's talent for comedy will come as no surprise to viewers of his English-language films, and he provides the film's finest comic moment when he walks into his bedroom to find his wife trying to hide her lover (his nephew) under the bed - a moment straight out of a Feydeau farce.

The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

Two moments of great artistic beauty stand out for me. First, when the Nawab, overwhelmed by the political situation while in conference with his ministers, seeks solace in a haunting, graceful song he had composed in a happier time (actually composed by Ray - perhaps the director showing us his self-identification with the character). Second, in a scene where Mir is left on his own at the chessboard while Mirza goes off to "see what the trouble is" with his wife, the camera follows Mir as he gets up and goes out into the hallway to see where his friend has got to. The camera then stays still as he retraces his steps, and in the vertical slice of light caused by a gap between two curtains that separate the hallway and the chess room, we see framed the precise point on the chessboard where Mir's hand slowly and surreptitiously comes into view as he sneakily moves one of the pieces. A virtuoso piece of camerawork and compositional framing that, like the film as a whole, never fails to enchant.
IMDB Reviewer,
41 out of 43 people found this review useful
The Chess Players (1977) [ReUp]

Special Features:
- Satyajit Ray: Selected Filmography
- Original British Poster Art
- Production Notes

All Credits goes to Original uploader.

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