Chess in Movies

I was watching Death Note a couple of nights before and I don't remember now if it's at the end of the first movie or the start of the second (I was watching it back-to-back) that the bitter rivals of the movie, L and Light, sat down for a game of chess. It made me wonder what are the reasons for putting chess in a movie. What character or atmosphere does it lend to the movie? Does it make it more classy, or maybe give it a sense of symbolism? In the case of this movie, L (the detective) believes correctly that Light is the criminal that he is tracking, though he doesn't have the evidence yet. And Light attempts to dislodge L's attention on him by even offering to join his team of detectives to catch the criminal. For a chess enthusiast, seeing the two across the board, exchanging a dialogue of wits to "crack" the other, while making their moves, is as good as it gets. It lends an aura of intellectual prowess and cunning for the two of them.

Another movie that comes to mind was Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams. Here, a robot that succeeeded in getting himself declared as a human is playing a game of chess with his fully human wife, as they ponder the possibility of letting mortality take its course upon them after years of being kept alive and healthy by technology. There is a feeling of awkwardness perhaps in the minds of the viewers considering that Andrew (the robot's name) was created to serve and accept orders, which is what we would normally expect from what we create, not spend his days pondering and being engaged in intellectual things.

These are just two movies, and we have seen already the variations of how chess was made to represent the characters in these movies. One crystallized conflict, the other was instrumental in tugging at our stereotypes. A quick search on movies in chess will yield a couple of hundreds of sites with lists. It would be nice to check out the quality of these kinds of movies, and maybe find out also how varied are the genre that it encompass. But hey, I can only take a few at a time. If you know of some that you've watched and left an impression on you, do share it with us. You might be able to convince us to put it on top of our list.

Grab the popcorn and make your move!