Tribeca: “Grandmasters” Makes Chess Feel like an F1 Race
To the outsider, chess is not a particularly thrilling activity to either participate in or view as a spectator. The game is simply too hard to appreciate if the viewer isn’t aware of the nuances or even the general rules. Despite that, Liza Mandelup’s Grandmasters, which premieres as part of the Tribeca TV section of the festival, has captured a storm that’s brewing in the chess world that is wholly entrancing, even to those who cannot tell a rook from a bishop.
Grandmasters opens with a definition of its title: “The highest title a chess player can achieve. It is awarded by the International Chess Federation, FIDE, and is held for life.” This is what kids dream about when they play their first match. Magnus Carlsen is one such Grandmaster and, when cameras start rolling, he’s just done the unthinkable. Magnus declares that he will not be defending his World Chess Championship title. He’s grown bored and tired of the classical way of things, and when a German entrepreneur, Jan Henric Buettner, offers him the opportunity to mix things up, Magnus takes it.
Courtesy of Tribeca
The first episode of Grandmasters was shown as part of the festival, and Mandelup does an exceptional job of making the viewer crave the next episode. Not only does it end on a delicious cliffhanger, but the cast of characters in the chess world is far more bombastic than an outsider might think. Magnus is confident, cool, collected, and on top of the world. Jan Henric has his head in the clouds and reality will not bring him down. Magnus’ rival, Hans Niemann, is the bad boy of the chess world. Then there’s Wesley So, a soft-spoken player and one of the few who can say they’ve beaten Magnus.
Grandmasters captures the world of chess at a breaking point. It’s a growing pain that has to happen for all hobbies, games, and industries. The old has to give way to the new, but in a world so deeply entrenched in tradition, those growing pains feel like all-out war. While that may sound like an overreaction, it’s exactly the word the FIDE president used to describe Magnus’ freestyle chess tournament. This showy era of sport is profoundly at odds with the intellectual ideal that chess has built for itself for millennia. To watch these two worlds attempt to find a middle ground makes for a compelling piece of television.
If all that didn’t sell you on Grandmasters, perhaps the scandal about vibrating anal beads as a way of cheating may seal the deal.
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