Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players) is a 1977 film by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, featuring the actors Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, David Abraham , Tom Alter and Richard Attenborough.

The film is set in 1856 and shows the life and customs of 19th century Islamic India.

The film shows in parallel the helpless, historical drama of the Indian kingdom Awadh, whose capital is Lucknow, and the Muslim king nauab Wajid Ali Shah , who is captured by the British, without that the nauab, artist and poet, but completely not commanding, could do nothing but cry in poetic fashion, because the British had already signed with him a treaty of protection, and he didn't hold enough of an army, and the private, personal, and also funny, of two rich noblemen of this kingdom, inseperable friends, who, having completely lost the war virtues of their grandparents, became passionately obsessed with the game of chaturanga or chess, neglecting their wives. The role of Captain Weston, so British in his ways, but in love with Urdu poetry, is also worth noting.

Similarities can be found between this movie and:

• The comedies of Molière, especially those about an obsessed character
• Shakespeare: like in Shakespeare the work has many levels, total play of the world, the individual dramas in the middle of historical dramas, echoing one another, a cosmic emotional feeling.
• The saying of Jean Giraudoux in Electre about the passion that most hinders happiness: perseverence - "a happy family, that is a local defeat. happy times, that is a general capitulaton" This is the bitter lesson of the film: to come to terms with defeat, failure, any wisdom can be individual or collective, at least one's fate.
• And in the last scene, maybe the most touching, as touching as the one in Woody Allen's Manhattan, after which Mir shoots at Mirza and complains out loud "I won't have a partner to play chess with", Mirza responds to him "but you have one in front of you!" (thus making him understand that he forgives him) and he finally concludes that "after nightfall, we will go back home. we both need darkness to hide our faces."

External link

• Movie information on IMDB.com