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The Luzhin Defence [DVD] [2000]
 
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The Luzhin Defence [DVD] [2000]

DVD ~ John Turturro
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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Frequently Bought Together

The Luzhin Defence [DVD] [2000] + Innocent Moves [DVD] [1994] + Game Over: Kasparov And The Machine [DVD] [2004]
Total RRP: £55.97
Price For All Three: £27.14

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Product details

  • Actors: John Turturro, Emily Watson, Geraldine James, Stuart Wilson, Christopher Thompson
  • Directors: Marleen Gorris
  • Writers: Peter Berry, Vladimir Nabokov
  • Producers: Andrew Warren, Caroline Wood, Eric Robison, Jody Patton, Leo Pescarolo
  • Format: PAL, Widescreen
  • Language English
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 12
  • Studio: Entertainment in Video
  • DVD Release Date: 19 Feb 2001
  • Run Time: 104 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B000056N4R
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 28,983 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

Reviews

Special Features
16:9 Wide Screen
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
Featurette
Theatrical Trailer


Synopsis
Based on the novel THE DEFENSE by Vladimir Nabokov, director Marleen Gorris's THE LUZHIN DEFENCE is set in Italy in the 1920s as the world reknowned chess master Alexander Luzhin (John Turturro) from St. Petersburg, Russia, arrives for a match with his only known rival. Almost immediately after he arrives, Luzhin meets a glowing, graceful aristocratic woman, Natalia (Emily Watson), who is attending the match with her mother. Surrounded by potential suitors, Natalia is busy behaving like a lady and presenting various young men to her mother for approval. However, she is curious about the slovenly, unconventional, quirky Luzhin from their first meeting, and she sees past his social ineptitude, believing him to be a true genius. Luzhin is utterly smitten, and practically forgets his determination to win the match when he proposes marriage to Natalia. From there, THE LUZHIN DEFENCE spirals downward as Natalia becomes a maternal figure to Luzhin, who is haunted by ghosts from his past and is nearly driven insane by the nagging, torturous pressure to figure out the one move (a flawless defense) that will allow him to win the chess match.
With beautiful imagery depicting the lavish Italian resort where the match is held, elegant costumes, and a triumphant, stirring classical score, THE LUZHIN DEFENCE is an evenly acted, well-paced film about love, intrigue, and going that extra mile.

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Customer Reviews

8 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars TREACHERY AND LOVE COMPETE FOR CHESS GENIUS' LIFE, 19 Feb 2005
By F. Sweet (Midwestern USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
The talented John Turturro and Emily Watson head an excellent cast delicately directed by Marleen Gorris to tell the story of THE LUZHIN DEFENCE. The Russian chess genius, Luzhin is believably played by Turturro whose range is unbelievably broad and convincing.

Story: Alexander (Sacha) Luzhin, a disheveled and erratic chess master [reminiscent of the main character, musical genius in SHINE] arrives at a resort in the Italian Lakes to compete in the world chess championships. He had visited the same resort many years earlier with his cold and distant parents who we meet in frequent flashbacks. Childhood memories disturb Luzhin during his stay. Among the guests at the resort is the beautiful Natalia (Watson), hounded by her mother (Geraldine James) to the search for a class perfect husband. Believing the handsome Stassard (Christopher Thompson) is the perfect candidate, Natalia's mother is horrified when she pursues a relationship with Luzhin after he spontaneously declares his love for her and he proposes marriage to her across a fence at a tennis court. As the final contest of the chess tournament approaches, Luzhin's treacherous former mentor Valentinov (Stuart Wilson) arrives at the resort and plots to destroy his game; and, indeed, his life.

Alexander's complicated relationships with Natalia, his parents and his mentor are all explored in the movie. But only one is explored to a satisfactory level -- his relationship with chess itself. The movie is reduced by some flawed stereotypes such as the villainous Valentinov and the society-obsessed mother. These distract from what is essentially a dark story of humans using each other as pawns in a game. Also on the negative side of the ledger is the absurd inaccuracey of the Lanc Hid (Chain Bridge) juxtaposed with the Millenium Park in Budapest, Hungary. The two places are several miles apart but in THE LUZHIN DEFENCE, Director Gorris changes the city for the sake of a departure shot. That' simply not honest.

On the positive side, the rhythms of Vladimir Nabokov's prose (in a screenplay by Peter Berry) conveys the the sad, sometimes comic, story. Luzhin's White Russian emigre class are a people so cultivated and refined that wherever they travel they feel at home. But for poor Luzhin, his crippling by neuroses will not allow him to participate in this life. Turturro, as usual, is superb. He could have turned Luzhin into a highly amusing freak show, and it would have been great fun but it would have ruined the movie. He keeps Luzhin's pathos clearly in focus. We can feel the torment that Luzhin undergoes so crushingly that we must admire his noble battle to stand up to oppressors not only all around him, but from his own mind. Turturro's tenderness, even romance are not associated with any of his earlier works. It's a great performance in a hypnotic movie.

This movie is worth seeing because of its ethereal novelty and virtuoso performances by Turturro and Watson.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Opening Move for Pushkins Duel, 26 Oct 2002
By taking a rest - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)   
I have not read the book upon which this movie is based, so I had no expectations that needed to be met or dashed. Knowledge of chess is not required to enjoy this film, when explanations enhance a scene they are provided. John Turturro and Emily Watson are wonderful and the setting at Lake Como is gorgeous. The title, "The Luzhin Defence", is applicable not only to an endgame strategy devised, but also represents what the character of Luzhin employs every day of his life to survive.

Chess is a fabulously complex game that no player has ever claimed to have mastered. Brilliant champions like Kasparov explain their endless fascination with the game is precisely because it is a challenge that can never be met with finality. If you pick up any basic chess book, the possible directions that are available to the two players, especially at the game's start are measured exponentially. Great players must be able to predict a variety of futures as the result of any given move they or their opponent may choose. This is demonstrated with a bit of sleight of hand of the director during one match in the film to great effect.

Luzhin is a man who is shaped both by his genius and the dysfunctional family he is the product of. Chess simultaneously defines his life, offers him shelter from those around him, and leads him to an addiction to the game that starts as eccentric and progresses to destructive. This is not a story of yet another person of extraordinary talent who also is socially dysfunctional because of his genius. His childhood and his early life are what he must form a defence against. Chess becomes a scapegoat for all the problems he sees around him as a youth. He does not have talent; rather he sees the harm he appears to inflict by constantly defeating his father at the game. His mentor and coach become no more than the means by which he is exploited.

His relationship with Emily Watson's character is appropriate as she too is considered wildly unconventional by the standards of her parents, although primarily by her mother. She is also the target of constant criticism, her life a sequence of interferences by her mother, an overbearing anti-Semitic nuisance of a person.

The close of the film initially left me disappointed. However after letting a day pass it actually becomes poignant if you are willing to stretch a bit for it. Director Marleen Gorris does s very good job of portraying the story on the screen. How much justice she does the book, as I mentioned I can not say.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars REMARKABLE, 12 Aug 2007
By stuart "s.vernon" (MIDDLESBROUGH, ENGLAND) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
Obsession comes in many flavors, and exists for a variety of reasons; for some it may be nothing more than a compulsive disorder, but for others it may be an avenue of survival. Lack of nurturing, combined with an inability to negotiate even the simplest necessities of daily life or the basic social requirements, may compel even a genius to enthusiastically embrace that which provides a personal comfort zone. And in extreme cases, the object of that satisfaction may become a manifested obsession, driving that individual on until what began as a means of survival becomes the very impetus of his undoing, and as we discover in `The Luzhin Defence,' directed by Marleen Gorris, a high level of intelligence will not insure a satisfactory resolution to the problem, and in fact, may actually exacerbate the situation. Obsession, it seems, has no prejudice or preference; moreover, it gives no quarter.

At an Italian resort in the 1920's, Alexander Luzhin (John Turturro) is one of many who have gathered there for a chess tournament, the winner of which will be the World Champion. Luzhin is a Master of the game, but he is vulnerable in that chess has long since ceased to be a game to him; rather, it is his obsession, that one thing discovered in childhood that saw him though his total ineptness in seemingly all areas of life, and enabled him to cope with the subtle disenfranchisements of his immediate family. So Luzhin is a genius with an Achilles heel, a flaw which perhaps only one other person knows about and understands, and furthermore realizes can be exploited for his own personal gain at this very tournament. That man is Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), Luzhin's former mentor, who after an absence of some years has suddenly reappeared and made himself known to Luzhin.

Valentinov is an unwelcomed, disconcerting presence to Luzhin, and once again life threatens to overwhelm him. Not only is he about to face a formidable opponent in the tournament, Turati (Fabio Sartor), against whom in a previous match he emerged with a draw after fourteen hours, but he is also attempting to resolve a new element in his life-- his feelings for a young woman he's just met at the resort, Natalia (Emily Watson). And, genius though he may be, dark clouds are gathering above him that just may push Luzhin even deeper into the obsession that has been the saving grace, as well the curse, of his entire life.

To tell Luzhin's story, Gorris effectively uses flashbacks to gradually reveal the elements of his childhood that very quickly led to his obsession with chess. And as his background is established, it affords the insights that allow the audience to more fully understand who Luzhin is and how he got to this point in his life. For the scenes of his childhood, Gorris textures them with an appropriately dark atmosphere and a subtle sense of foreboding that carries on into, and underlies, the present, more pastoral setting of the resort. The transitions through which she weaves the past together with the present are nicely handled, and with the pace Gorris sets it makes for a riveting, yet unrushed presentation that works extremely well. She also underplays the menace produced by the presence of Valentinov, concentrating on the drama rather than the suspense, which ultimately serves to heighten the overall impact of the film, making Luzhin's tragedy all the more believable and unsettling.

The single element that makes this film so memorable, however, is the affecting performance of John Turturro. For this film to work, Luzhin must be absolutely believable; one false or feigned moment would be disastrous, as it would take the viewer out of the story immediately. It doesn't happen, however, and the film does work, because the Luzhin Turturro creates is impeccably honest and true-to-life. He captures Luzhin's genius, as well as his inadequacies, and presents his character in terms that are exceptionally telling and very real. It's a performance equal to, if not surpassing, Geoffrey Rush's portrayal of David Helfgott in `Shine.' And when you compare his work here with other characters he's created, from Sid Lidz in `Unstrung Heroes' to Pete in `O Brother Where Art Thou?' to Al Fountain in `Box of Moonlight,' you realize what an incredible range Turturro has as an actor, and what a remarkable artist he truly is.

As Natalia, Emily Watson is excellent, as well, turning in a fairly reserved performance through which she develops and presents her character quite nicely. Though she has to be somewhat outgoing to relate to Luzhin, Watson manages to do it in an introspective way that is entirely effective. Most importantly, because of the detail she brings to her performance, it makes her accelerated relationship with Luzhin believable and lends total credibility to the story. You have but to look into Watson's eyes to know that the feelings she's conveying are real. It's a terrific bit of work from a talented and gifted actor.

The supporting cast includes Geraldine James (Vera), Christopher Thompson (Stassard), Peter Blythe (Ilya), Orla Brady (Anna), Mark Tandy (Luzhin's Father), Kelly Hunter (Luzhin's Mother), Alexander Hunting (Young Luzhin) and Luigi Petrucci (Santucci). Well crafted and delivered, `The Luzhin Defence' is an emotionally involving film, presented with a restrained compassion that evokes a sense of sorrow and perhaps a reflection upon man's inhumanity to man. We don't need a movie, of course, to tell us that there is cruelty in the world; but we are well served by the medium of the cinema when it reminds us of something we should never forget, inasmuch as we all have the ability to effect positive change, and to make a difference in the lives of those around us. I rate this one 9/10.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars a chess piece
using an old masters move to pick up the girl
might not be a usual way to handle a woman
nice period piece but what did the bishop say
to the actress
Published 4 months ago by Peter Harris

4.0 out of 5 stars "you have to make brilliant, bold, courageous moves"
A vulnerable man needs to overcome sabotage and face up to the medical opinion that to continue playing chess will kill him. Read more
Published 4 months ago by DangermouseZilla

4.0 out of 5 stars Man of Glass
Having read & reviewed Nabokov's original book version (The Luzhin Defense (Penguin Modern Classics)), let me first stress that despite a few important changes, the film is as... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Niels Peter Q. Marstrand

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful movie adaptation of a heart-rending story
Having read Vladimir Nabokov's novel "The Defence", on which this
film is based, many years ago, I was fascinated to see how the
director would rise to a very challenging... Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2002 by T. D. Welsh

4.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant and eccentric story
John Tuturro plays Luzhin, a brilliant chess player who suffers from intense stress when playing chess. Unlikly as this seems, Tuturro pulls this off with grace. Read more
Published on 22 May 2001

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