Satyajit Ray's film career was almost extensively based in Bengali culture and it wasn't until 1977 that he made a film in Urdu outside of his home region. The Chess Players is set in 1856 as the last independent area of what we now call India was finally commandeered by the British Empire. Ray's film portrays the events and the avariciousness of the British colonialists alongside a representation of the Indian society around these historical changes. The film takes a two track approach to its story. The first track looks at the struggle between the King of Oudh, the last independent region, and the representative of the British governor, General Outram, played by top British luvvie and stunt double for God, Richard Attenborough. The second track considers the chess playing friendship between two local noblemen played by Saeed Jaffrey and Sanjeev Kumar.

The struggle between the artful and effete high living King and the culturally superior General perfectly captures the greed and colonial ignorance of British intentions in India. Outram effectively decides to dethrone the monarch because of what he terms "bad administration" but means the King's penchant for luxury, poetry and praying too much that contrasts with his own sense of British propriety. But this reason is little more than a fig leaf as the true motivation is the expansion of British business interests in India. Outram knows this and fears revolt from the people of the region led by the king but eventually the peace loving and luxury loving King chooses the path of least resistance.

The second track of the film features the lives of two nobleman as they indulge their love of chess. As is pointed out in the film, chess originated in India and was appropriated by the British who changed the rules and pieces to suit themselves. The two noblemen, Meer and Mirza, play the Indian variant whilst talking about the plight of their independence. When they play at Mirza's place, his wife becomes jealous and attempts to destroy their game by ruses and the theft of the pieces, so the two men agree to play at Meer's home. At Meer's home, his nephew seems to be keeping a close watch on Meer's wife and tells Meer that he is hiding from being press-ganged by the King. Fear of this happening to them sends the chess players out to find another location to play and they find themselves playing in the open. This sequence of two men in a desperate search for chess is very much like an Indian version of Samuel Beckett. Their competition gets furious and the men come to blows only to stop as they realise that the British troops are coming.

Ray's film shows an indolent bourgeois class who would rather play games than fight an invasion and as one of the chess players comment, "If we can't cope with our wives what chance have we with the British troops"! The film is not over earnest, aiming for a sly Renoiresque satire of the greedy Brits and the impotent nobles. The chess that the two men love they will soon have to learn to play the British way and this mirrors what will happen to the rest of their lives under colonisation.

Ray's cast aim for a caricatured presentation of their subjects and his set design and framing is beautiful and impressive. The Chess Players presents Indian society before colonisation much in the way that Renoir's La Regle du Jeu did the same for pre-occupation France. Attenborough is surprisingly good in his role as head henchman of colonial interests, and Kumar and Jaffrey are fine tragi-comic figures. The Chess Players is an intriguing satirical document that will reward those in search of an intelligent perspective on imperialism and loss of nationhood.