You Got Served

"Both of us beneath our love, both of us above..."

― Leonard Cohen, "Dance Me to the End of Love"

"Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it's predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame."

― Beth Harmon, "The Queen's Gambit"

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Dear Kate,

I don't think the word-of-mouth Netflix phenomenon "The Queen's Gambit" needs any more words from this mouth, but here I am, can't help speaking the good news.

Years ago Eugene Peterson was asked this question, "I read an article where you wrote, 'Every time someone tells a story, and tells it well, the gospel is served.' Do you mean that we need to put the gospel into different forms other than, 'Here are the steps to be saved?'"

And this is how he answered, "I think the key word in what I said is served, I didn't mean it's proclaimed every time someone tells a story, [but that] it's served. When stories are told people begin to get a sense that life has value and meaning, and that they are significant. And then they start looking for the significance, 'Where's the meaning?' Where can I find significance? But until people begin to realize their embededness in creation, and in suffering, that they aren't just accidents along the way, they really don't hear the gospel story. So, the important word is served."

You got served in "The Queen's Gambit."

It could have easily fallen prey to trite modern agendas such as "girl power," or the rise of a genius, or how the world around us, the generations before us have messed us up.  Well, it's all of these, but only incidentally.  It's about human being, exalted, gloried as we are meant to be, yet fallen, to earth, this Earth in particular.  It could use for its tagline the title of another book by Walter Tevis, on which Gambit is based, also made into a cult classic, "The Man Who Fell to Earth."

The human who was meant for heaven got stuck on earth.

Talk about the book's author Walter Tevis, I can't help but mention a favorite movie of mine that is also based on his novel, "The Hustler," Paul Newman's best movie, possibly the best "sports movie" ever made, for which there is a sequel in it Newman reprised his role and got an Oscar under the direction of Scorsese.  All mesmerizing, intoxicating, morally complex character study disguised as drugstore fictions.

Final point (and so far I don't think I have given anything away, I hope): pay attention to the details of the "Earth" to which the human fell in Gambit, the particulars that you can actually smell...AND, sorry, yet one more point, the master class editing, giving the iconic editing work of Dede Allen in "The Hustler" a run for her money.

Let me send you off with these words from "The Hustler," about the human predicament general and specific:

Bert: You got talent.

Eddie: So I got talent? What beat me?

Bert: Character.

Yours, Alex