Coastal View News
In chess, the queen is the most powerful piece. Yes, the king
is the objective—the piece to capture to win the game. But the queen has got
the talent—the most expansive move set. She is the leader of the army, and the determiner
of one’s game plan.
And, as the chess coach in “Queen of Katwe”, Robert
Katende (David Oyelowo), is careful to point out, in chess, as in life, you
have to have a game plan. You can’t just move pieces around willy-nilly. You
have to be thoughtful, patient, persistent, methodical. You may not always be
able to predict what is going to happen. But you can plan, and choose how to
react. In that way, you control your destiny.
Easier said than done—especially for coach Katende’s best
student, Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga). You see, Phiona is from Katwe—an
extremely impoverished town in Uganda. She lives with her siblings and (single)
mom in a rundown shack, doesn’t go to school, and has to sell maize to help
feed her family. So she doesn’t exactly have the time or opportunity to think
about her future.
Yet, when it comes to chess, Phiona is an oracle. She can
see six, seven, eight moves ahead. She’ll lose her knight, but capture her
opponent’s rook three moves later. She’ll cede her rook, only to take the queen
down the road.
Phiona has an uphill climb, though, and not just because
she has limited time and resources. One of the crappy things about being poor
is that not only are you, well, poor, but people also look down on you for
being poor. It’s a double whammy. Phiona is just as good at chess as the rich
kids across town, but it takes every bit of coach Katende’s gumption and
ingenuity to get her into the posh chess tournaments she wants to compete in,
and needs to compete in, in order to make it to the next level.
But, as coach Katende says, she belongs there. And once
in, she crushes her competition. She mows through girls and boys, younger kids,
older kids, kids from other cities, kids from other countries, champions and
masters. She is Katwe’s queen of chess.
And, increasingly, Phiona becomes the queen of her life, as
well as the lives of those around her. She wins the opportunity to think ahead,
to plan ahead, and even captures the means to execute her plan.
“Queen of Katwe” is sweet. It’s warm and touching—the
dictionary definition of a feel good movie.
It does have this Disney-fied feel to it, though—the
world is one big cartoon that promises everything is all right, people are
swell (or at least not super evil), and that justice always prevails. Even the
tears feel somewhat inconsequential, like they’re only there to make us feel
more warmly toward the characters.
I think this may be a bad thing, though I’m not entirely
sure. I, at least, have a gut-reaction aversion to it. It feels a little icky how
Disney’s applies their trademark oversimplification and white washing to the
plight of people in such dire circumstances. It feels just a little off that a
company that charges $95 a day to go to one of their theme parks (more if you
want to go to the whole thing) is trying to tackle the woes of poverty.
But I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t beat up on Disney. At
least they made the movie in the first place. After all, Phiona’s story is
worth telling, and worth watching. So if this version of it comes bursting at
the seams with ooh-ey gooey, sugary sap, and makes you feel like humanity is
wrapping you up in a warm blanket, then, well, maybe that’s all right.
