Don’t let the elaborate production, period setting, and sophisticated actors fool you – Chess Story (also known by the title The Royal Game) is, at its heart, a good psychological thriller. I’d put it in the Shutter Island family of films where the main character has descended into madness, therefore leaving us to sort out what is real and what is imagined in his head.
Set in Vienna, 1938: Austria is occupied by the Nazis, and it’s happening faster than those not paying attention realize. Dr. Josef Bartok (a debonair Oliver Masucci) is preparing to flee to America with his wife Anna, but he hasn’t taken action fast enough.
He’s arrested by the Gestapo, and they need him to stay very much alive, something not afforded to so many others.
As a former notary to the deposed Austrian aristocracy, he is told to help the local Gestapo leader gain access to their private bank accounts in order to fund the Nazi regime. He tried to burn as many documents as possible before the raid, and he has miraculously committed some, all, or many of the account codes to memory.
Refusing to cooperate, Bartok is locked in solitary confinement – but it’s not a dank dungeon to which he’s assigned. It’s actually a decent enough hotel room with running water – even hot water.
What he does not have is any companionship. No books, no phone, no connection to anything outside his locked door. Not even the soldier who delivers his soup every day will speak to him. Days turn into weeks and time ceases to mean anything. What day is it? What year is it?
But Bartok holds firm, refusing to give the info to the slithery Gestapo bureaucrat assigned to get the goods.
As his sanity is gradually slipping away, Bartok happens upon a book of Chess matches, which he hides and reads incessantly when it’s safe to do so. He copes with his descent into madness by disappearing into matches within the pages of his illicit book.
And here I’m going to cut most details short. The revelations are such a cool part of the story.
I’ll just say that frequent flash backs and flash forwards from his solitary confinement in Vienna to his ship cruising to freedom are, maybe, pieces of a puzzle. Or, perhaps, the delusions of a mad man. Or a great synthesis of the two.
I rarely have time to watch a movie twice – there’s always a new one coming down the chute. But Chess Story is one I look forward to watching again.
Chess Story is in Theaters Now: https://www.filmmovement.com/in-theaters