'Queen of Katwe': Commanding Performance
You should see director Mira Nair's "Queen of Katwe," especially if you want to feel miserable, sad, perhaps a little guilty, frustrated and angry on the way to becoming a better person.
It's the true story of how Phiona Mutesi, a Ugandan girl, had her life changed after learning the game of chess. But that's just the movie's way to get us into Poorest Africa … to abash us with its divulgences of the Third World. Expect no really great surprises. What an absolute downer it would be if the impoverished Phiona had no talent to pull her from the muck and mire of squalor.
None of this is to say that folks with absolutely no social conscience won't find the competitive aspect of Phiona's story stirring, though they will have to ignore the hunger, ignorance, filth and overwhelming hopelessness that generally attends poverty to enjoy that little charge of adrenalin. It gets a bit beleaguering: The unsanitary, bedraggled, dirt streets of Katwe, populated by the beyond disadvantaged. Nothing trickles down to these poor souls, and darn the disingenuous rationalizers who ask them to wait for those drops. The in-your-face scenario is pathetically dire.
As the story unfolds and the teen-aged Phiona, superbly portrayed by Madina Nalwanga, is inspired by Robert Katende, the ministry worker who spots her chess acumen, it occurs that even if she showed no genius, simply surviving her circumstances would be accomplishment enough. Dad has passed and her mom, Nakku, played by Lupita Nyong'o with notable aplomb, is left to scratch out a barely meager existence for her brood. The callous landlady, who lords it over the tenants of her nasty hovels, insists she finds a man, illicit or not. But that's not Nakku's style.
All the same, expect the usual parental resistance when it is suggested that her daughter has some sort of seemingly esoteric and far-fetched talent. Mom is deeply immersed in the business of survival. She can't really imagine that playing a board game could amount to something good for her daughter. Besides, she needs Phiona to rove the streets selling maize for the paltry few pennies it brings. It's bad enough that her older, rather pretty daughter has had her head turned by a young man who zooms about with her perched on the back of his motorcycle like a trophy.
Of course, Mr. Katende, solidly played by David Oyelowo, is undaunted. He is that rare person dedicated to making a difference. Though full up with baggage of his own, with a wife and new baby to support, and hoping to land the engineering job he studied for in college, he is first and foremost a teacher ... you know, the kind that you fondly remember. His intercession brims with optimism and vision. But unlike the college football coach who tells Mom and Pop of the riches that await Junior, he preaches self-actualization.
That isn't to say that there won't be the proverbial pot of gold at the end of Phiona's rainbow of discoveries as she moves up the ladder of competition, not the least of which is delighting in the taste of ketchup. It's a huge jump. The comparative sociology that screenwriter William Wheeler instructively sketches in adapting Tim Crothers' ESPN Magazine article impresses just how far down the scale of progress the Third World dwells. Expectedly, Phiona's revelations recall the WWI song that worried, "How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paree?"
The plot cannily establishes a great contrast in pressing its humanistic message. Mixing chess, once a hifalutin' game of the nobility, with an almost unbearable portrait of bare subsistence, illustrates that the lines drawn between people are ridiculously artificial, and hence destined to be crossed. It thus only follows that the chess matches Phiona plays are mini battles in the class warfare of which she is a victim-turned-fighter.
The tournaments get surprisingly exciting, largely owing to the fine choreography of mood and atmosphere director Nair achieves. One film critic in the audience who never got past "Chutes and Ladders" was led to believe, at least for the length of the film, that he actually understood the game of chess. I think he even exclaimed "checkmate!" during one of the competitions' more rousing moments. But if you read the subtext, these moments of glory are not to be confused with the usual sports story victories. They are metaphors for a far nobler challenge.
This is good, documentary quality education, an instructive travelogue through the pitiable truth about the Third World, responsibly dramatized to make its eye-opening points palatable for general consumption. Unfortunately, it probably won't preach beyond the choir that comes to see it. But if it did, chances are those unlikely viewers might, at least for two hours and four minutes, vary their latest, self-absorbed shibboleth to how they might make all of humankind great again.
"Queen of Katwe," rated PG, is a Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture directed by Mira Nair and stars Madina Nalwanga, David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o. Running time: 124 minutes
