(Music)
- My grandfather once said that people were like
chess pces.
(Music)
My grandfather loved chess, and he specially loved to win.
He started his last and longest game the night they
took him away.
(Monks singing)
- Please papa, don't speak at the funeral.
- How do you know about that?
What Emma has asked me to do for her brother of course it's
not allowed.
She just doesn't want him buried like an animal.
She begged me.
(Monks singing)
- Your mother told me I'll get reported if I speak.
And if I don't do you really want a coward for
a grandfather?
(Music)
- Whatever you do, don't talk.
- What are they looking for?
(Music)
(Church bell tolls)
(Music)
- Teacher.
(Music)
- Like chess pces, people can be captured.
In Stalin's Russia you never knew who you could trust and
how or why they would betray you.
(Speaking Russian)
- But before the night was over another man would
be dead.
- There.
That's your spot now, old man.
What are you looking for?
A bed.
Not in Bruno's hotel.
- You're not a prisoner.
- Prisoner?
Look around, old man.
Everybody on my side of the door is either guilty of
holding back the ewe utopian paradise or
- waiting to get their hands around the
necks of our accusers.
(Music)
- What do you think, brother David?
Or don't you pacifists have violent thoughts?
- Don't mind Bruno.
He's the inside man.
- Inside man?
- That's just what I call him.
Food gets delivered he controls the distribution.
I'm David.
This is my brother.
Rudy.
- Sale. Jakob sale.
- Jakob sale?
The chess player?
So you might just get out.
- What is in your boot?
- My Bible.
I was a preacher on the outside.
We held secret meetings in homes and in the woods
at night.
- Then we were betrayed.
- I was arrested for praying at a funeral.
- Praying?
You should have preached a sermon.
(Clearing voice)
- Not as long as I'm around.
(Spitting)
- Attention!
- We have been informed that one of you has
religious writings.
I'm going to count to 5 and if no one steps forward you'll
all be punished.
1, 2, 3, 4
- I I have something.
- 5.
- Jakob sale, bring this back while they're asleep.
Be faithful unto death and you'll be given the
crown of life.
(Gunshot)
(Music)
- Jakob sale, bring this back while they're asleep.
- This is like the famine.
- My cousin's entire village starved to death and not
because they did not have a good harvest.
- Shut up.
We don't want to hear it.
- People were forced to trade jewelry to buy food.
And when the children of one family told their teacher that
their parents had secretly baptized them, the teacher
rewarded them with bread.
But later that night they came and stole the parents away so
that the children starved.
- Yasha, talk about something else, like what I have to do
to get out of here.
- I think you will get out of here when you learn how to be
nicer to me.
- Oh yeah?
When will everybody else get out?
- When we defeat Nikolai.
- The littlest girl was found dead but not before she had
gnawed off all her frozen fingers.
- Yasha!
Tell a different story.
- Hey everybody, listen up.
Yasha is telling his story again.
- Okay.
Well, one day I heard they were recruiting workers for
the mines and my name was on the top of the list.
- At the top of the list.
- I was the hardest working in my village.
At least that's what the commissar told me every time he
had a job for me.
Still mama did not like the idea of me working
in the mines.
- Because of your claustrophobia?
- No. Because I am afraid of closed in spaces.
(Laughing)
- Hey, you were telling us about your escape.
- Well, mama tells me this is not a good job for me and I
need to visit my relatives right away.
So I did.
Of course she meant her relatives in Kiev.
But I just went to my brother's house down
the street.
- Yasha?
- It was yasha's family that asked my grandfather to speak
at the funeral.
- He was too sick to go to school today.
Yasha, I said you were sick.
- Probably the only kind thing yasha's father ever did
for the boy was to keep him home from school the day he
fired my grandfather.
Yasha's mother would do anything for her son.
-But then I remembered the teacher's words,
to always tell the truth.
Always tell the truth, yasha.
And that is when they brought me here.
- And when did it dawn on you that you were in prison?
- When I got my first taste of blood.
- And what was it you said?
- I said this tastes as bad as prison food.
(Laughing)
(Sobbing)
- Yasha, tell us again when you said when you
ate the food.
- I said this
- There were two ways out of comrade
Nikolai's prison.
The first was to defeat him in chess because he had promised
to free anyone who beat him.
But no one ever beat him.
- Do you think you can teach me?
- So there was really only one way out.
(Door opens)
- How many pces did he lose this time?
- Yasha? Yasha?
I thought I saw
- that's right, Karl.
The teacher is here too, now.
You remember teacher, me and Karl how we sat
in the back row.
Bruno, if you lay a hand on him, I'll
- you'll what?
- Yasha, get some wood.
- So in just 4 moves the red dragon has been taken.
(Children laugh)
Comrade style.
Karl?
- We have a better teacher who doesn't waste time
playing checkers.
Sorry, old man.
You've got less than five minutes.
(Music)
- What are you thinking?
- About yasha talking even when he's sleeping.
- Yasha is yasha.
Karl is Karl.
Silent as ever.
- There's not much to say.
- We all need to talk sometimes.
- What I need is not to talk right now.
Something for my headache, like a bullet.
- I do have one question.
Do you still believe in god?
Karl, what would a chess pce be without the one who
guards it.
- I hate them.
He turned me in for nothing more than believing in god.
And I hate god for allowing it.
- Karl.
- No, teacher.
We're not in school now.
No more lectures about things you yourself shouldn't believe
in anymore.
- Karl
- he hasn't called for you yet, has he?
Let me tell you what happens to you in that office, what
they do to break you.
He sits you down and asks you to tell him that the white
paper is red.
And when you disagree, they dig under your finger nail
until your willing to say it's whatever color they want.
So you confess.
And after that you play chess like you've never
played before.
(Music)
- Grandpa, if you could do anything at all right now,
what would it be?
- To play one last great game of chess.
- After his conversation with Karl, my grandfather started
looking for an opportunity to play chess with
comrade Nikolai .
And he found one the very next morning.
- What is wrong with Karl?
- You're too early for breakfast.
- I don't want breakfast.
I want my spoon.
- This?
Oh, this belongs to Bruno.
What they call water is so brown here.
Why do you even need a spoon?
- Why don't I just hold on it for all the peas, potatoes and
carrots they might not strain out of it tomorrow.
- This isn't yours.
Maybe somebody stole yours.
(Music)
(Men fighting)
- Bruno.
- Just give it to me, old man, before somebody really
gets hurt.
- Bruno, can I ask you a question about what the spoon
looks like?
- It looks like a spoon.
- And how long have you had it?
- He was born with it in his mouth.
- Shut up.
- Bruno, how much ridges on there on the handle of
the spoon?
- How many what?
- Ridges.
- What are you talking about ridges?
- You do know what a Ridge is, don't you?
- How am I supposed to know that with my eyes?
- You can tell by the feel of it.
- What does it matter how many ridges it's got?
- Karl. Would you know the number?
- It has 2.
2 ridges.
- Only 2?
- No.
3.
No.
1.
- It has 2.
- Isn't life difficult enough as it is without us making it
worse for each other.
- Are you accusing me, old man?
- No.
It's just that what we have here seems like a simple case
of mistaken identity.
- I
- it's a simple mistake anyone could make.
Specially someone whose eyes aren't as good as they
used to be.
(Knocking at the door)
- There's a troublemaker!
Guard!
- Maybe you shouldn't have done that, teacher.
- You're 7 years old.
Your father beat you with a stick the first time you beat
him at chess.
Now, how do I know that?
- You have the papers?
- Papers?
- For me to sign admitting my guilt.
- What about your integrity?
Your good family name?
- I'm ready to sign.
- You know we are going to use this to send you
to Siberia.
- If I live that long.
- Then I will have my secretary prepare
your confession.
(Footsteps fading away)
(Thunder crashes)
Since you made my interrogation so easy today, I
have something for you.
- Teacher, did he make you play chess?
Why does he play chess with us and not with you?
(Music)
(Thunder crashes)
- Karl.
Yasha.
Nikolai.
- Nikolai.
Where had he heard that name before?
In our house.
We had a chess board with one missing pce.
Before I was born, my grandfather played a chess
champion and beat him.
In his joy, he handed the red queen to the champion's son.
But what he had given as a gift Nikolai
- Nikolai, go!
- Had taken as an insult.
- Nikolai.
- And now the time for vengeance had come.
(Footsteps on the stairs)
(Door opens)
- David fell asleep right over there and now he is not
there any more.
- Where is he?
- I've got to get out of here!
- Dig over there.
- Why?
- It's where David used to sleep.
- It's loose like somebody's been here before me.
(Music)
- N.
- Safe journeys to wherever you've been stolen to.
- The man still believed that comrade Nikolai would free
whoever would beat him at chess.
So my grandfather kept teaching him how to play.
But so far there was still only one way out of prison.
As they took one prisoner after another.
- That's right.
There's chaos.
- Have you ever noticed something about the people
that were taken?
They were all learning how to play chess.
With you.
- You're telling us that the comrade's been stuck in the
room with people who asked the teacher to play chess
with them?
And the first initials just happen to spell out -
Ivan, norbert, Fritz, Ernest.
- Hey. Joseph.
Are you just going to stand there until they take you?
Help me with my tunnel.
- I will help when you lose enough weight not to get stuck
in it.
Do you think you're the only one who tried to dig their way
out of here.
- Wait.
What do you mean?
What?
- Yasha!
- That is what I like about Joseph.
They will never steal him.
He's not afraid of anybody.
Not even Bruno.
I wish I was like him.
- Talking about me?
- We were just wondering how a big man like you could get
himself thrown into a place like this?
- Hey, what about my tunnel?
- Joseph, all you have to do is convince me that you're not
a killer like they say.
- A killer?
Okay.
For yasha I will tell it.
- So it wasn't long after that I was appointed chairman of our
beloved collective.
- Because you are so big.
- You think my sole qualification was my size?
Is that it? Well?
- So? Were you qualified?
- You know Rudy, you're not much better than that dead
brother of yours.
- Being a good mennonite is what got David killed.
- Because of his little Bible.
Because we catholics we don't read the Bible like you.
That means you're better than we are.
Is that it?
- Joseph, I would like to ask you a question.
- Go ahead.
Ask.
- Joseph, were you qualified?
Qualified to give this little man a good night of
thrashing, yes.
But to be in charge, to be in charge that was bigger joke
than yasha which I don't feel like talking about right now.
(Music)
- The last time I had bread like this it was Christmas.
(Singing silent night in Russian)
- Don't you know the rules?
There's no singing.
- What can they do to me?
Throw me in prison?
(Laughing)
- Sector 13, everybody out.
- Teacher, your coat.
Your coat please?
Just for a little white.
It's the only one big enough.
(Music)
- You see what you're singing did?
- They took the coat.
They took the coat!
Ah!
- Why did they leave the hole?
(Crying)
- No. No.
It was only a coat and it's warm today.
Put it on.
(Door slams open)
- Where are the religious writings?
You, take those off.
- I don't have anything.
- He doesn't.
- Comrade, he doesn't have anything.
Please.
- Happy now, lutheran?
Don't you know where they are taking him?
Why don't you stick up for him?
Aren't you both protestants?
Ahh!
- Sing a new song unto the lord.
(Door opens)
- Rudy.
(Music)
- So who is going to wear these?
(Music)
- Teacher?
Yasha and I have been talking and he wants me to ask you
a question.
- He can't ask me himself?
- He could but he wants me to.
Yasha wants to know if you would teach us some of the
songs from back home.
- The songs you're always humming for protection so they
will not be able to steal us.
Make us a choir.
- How about tomorrow?
- How about today?
- Maybe your Jesus won't be able to protect you.
Is that it, old man?
- Bruno talking about religion.
Somebody's crossing a line.
- You think I don't know about religion?
I've been to church.
- Once.
At Christmas.
- So what?
I go to hell, is that it?
- Why would an atheist need to worry about that?
- Listen, volvik, I've got as much religion as the next man.
Wait a minute, old man.
You're not getting off that easy. So?
What are the believers going to do about their choir?
- It depends on the teacher.
- The teacher is afraid.
I can smell it.
- Are you, teacher?
Are you afraid?
- To tell you the truth, I am.
Bruno, we all should be more than before.
- So the comrades are right?
- About what?
- About religion being an opiate for the weak and
the useless.
- Why do you have to be so angry?
- Angry?
Because everybody can see what is coming and anyone with half
a mind is going to leave before the whole country
falls apart.
They've taken my church.
They've taken my school.
They've taken my choir.
It's useless.
I'm useless and I am going to die that way, a useless
old man!
- So Ludwig, Gustav I remember your voices from
back home.
And Eric, Adam, Otto.
But I'm going to need more than just you.
So Joseph and volvik and you too, Bruno.
If you want.
- See, I told you he was not afraid.
- Can we be courageous some other way?
- So how do we begin?
- First I try the voices.
- It was my idea.
I will go first.
I will a very loud voice so I will sing tenor.
- Yes. I remember your voice.
- What song would you like to hear?
- How about silent night without words or sound?
- You don't think I know the words?
* oh, holy silent night ...
- That's good.
(Knocking)
(Music)
- It's freezing.
- Then everybody come together.
- Come on.
You want to get warm, don't you?
- Then let's go.
- Put the teacher in the middle.
- No, please.
Can we do this without fighting?
- Now we really are a choir.
- Yasha, if you could only hear yourself when you sing.
- What about you, Bruno?
What if you could hear yourself?
- Yasha, I'm a communist, what would I sing?
- The internationale.
- You think that's the only song I know, smart guy?
- It has to be a spiritual song.
- You think I don't know church music?
- So prove it and sing something.
- Right here in front of everybody?
- So whose afraid now, Bruno?
- Listen to me.
I'm not afraid anything.
- So why don't you sing then?
- All right.
I'll do it!
But no laughing.
- You laughed at yasha.
- Because his singing is ridiculous.
- Just sing and get it over with already.
There's a song my mother used to sing.
I'm just singing the first few words.
- That's all I need to hear what sort of voice you have.
- How did I get picked for this?
- I volunteer you because you are so brave.
- Bruno, just sing the first line.
(Clearing voice)
(Singing beautifully in Russian)
- That's almost as good as me.
- So Bruno, you're not the 100% comrade we all thought.
Bruno, try again only higher.
(Clearing voice)
(Singing in Russian)
(Bell rings)
(Singing continues)
- I think I've found my soloist.
- All right.
So whose next?
What about you, Joseph?
Or don't catholics sing hymns?
- What would an atheist like you care what we
christians do?
- I want to hear Bruno again.
(Laughing)
(Music)
- No wonder they never tried to stop us from digging out
of here.
- Maybe we are on top of a bunker.
- Bunker?
I told you we can't dig deep enough because of
the concrete.
- So we just dig shallow.
- And have them see us?
(Music)
(Yasha sings flatly)
(Music)
- I made it.
(Door slams open)
- Yasha?
- Yes.
- It's your birthday.
- I didn't know it was my birthday.
Where are we going?
- Solitary.
(Music)
(Men laughing)
(Wolf howls)
(Gunshot)
- What do you want yasha for?
- Religious writings.
- Yasha is an idiot.
He can barely read.
- Step out of the way, big man.
- It's always the religious writings with you people,
isn't it?
Can't you make up a better excuse?
(Music)
(Singing hymn)
(Singing together)
(Music)
- A present from the kitchen.
Just enough for you this time.
(Music)
- Teacher?
- What did you do that for?
How are they taking people away in the middle of the
night without us hearing it?
- Infer.
What do they mean?
- We need a detective.
- I think comrade Nikolai takes them away with
black magic.
(Music)
- Bruno, do you think god is letting bad things happen to
us because we deserve it?
- I don't know, yasha.
- What do you think they are going to do with the teacher?
- I don't know.
- Do you think they are going to set him free?
- Of course.
They'll be setting us all free.
In fact from now on I think they've become suddenly nice
guards and they'll be serving us tea and cake.
- What are you going to do when you get out, Bruno?
- Maybe I'll take a train to the sea to eat caviar.
- You, volvik?
- I'm going straight to my wife's restaurant to eat her
white bread.
- I'm going to go to a fancy restaurant and eat handfuls of
sunflower seeds.
(Spitting)
Don't worry, Bruno.
I will invite the brothers.
- The brothers?
- The choir.
Our church.
- Shut up!
This is not a church and you are not my brothers!
Specially you, yasha.
I'm not from your ridiculous family or your stinking
little village.
Listen to me.
They took Jakob to kill him!
Just like they killed David, Rudy, Joseph and all the rest.
Just like they're going to kill us.
All of us!
But if he does come back alive, I'm going to break his
scrawny for poisoning us with his ideas and his singing and
his brotherhood.
And all of it.
(Music)
- Marta, what can you do with a bell?
(Thunder crashes)
- Please.
I need to get this to my grandfather.
(Music)
- Americans call it jazz.
(Jazz plays)
I was trained soloist in the Russian opera.
But they ruined my singing voice.
Strive for quality.
Purity.
Why did this big prisoner sabotage my solution?
You know, running this place is not much better than being
a prisoner here.
In her untimely death,she no longer has need for that.
(Music)
(Scar engine starts)
(Music)
(Bell jingles)
(Music)
- Fix your off key singer.
(Door opens)
- Comrade didn't like yasha's singing.
(Bell jingles)
- What's that?
- My granddaughter sent it to me.
She's dead.
(Laughing)
- He tried the same thing with Victor and Victor thought
his wife was dead until someone set him straight.
Victor, isn't that right?
What?
A dead girl sent you a bell?
- Another letter.
What's this one say?
- It's the same thing last year and each year before that
for 12 years now.
Dante.
- Inferno.
- Whose ever heard of anybody burning?
- No wonder he didn't punish us for singing.
He likes it.
But not with yasha spoiling it.
- We don't know that.
- It seems pretty clear to me.
- Yasha is part of the choir.
- Not anymore he isn't.
- Look.
This is not a hard decision to make.
- Yes.
It isn't because we are not singing for the comrade.
We are not singing anymore at all.
- You think we have a choice?
- Listen to me, I do not sing for a mad man.
My choir sings for the pleasure of heaven and for
that, no willing man anywhere is unfit.
- I'm telling you we sing without yasha.
- I'm with volvik.
- I'm with teacher.
- I say the choir votes on it.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Teacher.
- Volvik.
- Six.
- I never wanted to sing in the first place.
- I don't think the comrades spy should get a vote.
- What did you call me, fat man?
- Why don't you come over to our side and do something
about it if you can.
- Remember the doctrines?
They're like the Jakob from the Bible.
And his twin, esau.
Brothers who became enemies.
- Stop it!
Everybody stop.
Okay.
- So who remembers the stories the teacher used to
tell at the school house?
- I always liked the one about Jakob's ladder.
Jakob was wanted man on the run.
And one night as he slept in the fld
- with his head on a rock for a pillow, he had a dream.
- A good dream?
- A very good dream.
- Jakob had a vision that he was under a ladder like a
great staircase with angels going up and down from heaven
to earth and up again.
- Good, papa.
Your name is Jakob, too.
- Maybe the ladder was Jakob's way out.
- I'm going to ask god to help us to build that ladder.
Amen.
(Music)
- Bruno?
Can you deliver a message?
I'm ready to start my choir again.
Oh, but with changes.
- No music?
- Something better than new music.
A musician.
- Musician?
- Yes.
A musician.
- Who?
Teacher, I may be a great singer but I am no musician.
- Yasha, look at me.
Tell me what I am.
- You are a teacher.
- Exactly.
So I'm going to give you an instrument and
- and teach me to play.
So I get to sing and play.
- This is going well.
- Yasha, I need to speak with you privately.
If you're the only one who gets to sing and play an
instrument, the others will be jealous.
- Why?
- Well, because all they get to do is sing.
It will seem unfair.
Trust me, yasha, I've got it all figured out.
- Where is this instrument?
- Oh.
(Blowing)
You can teach me to play this?
Don't you think my voice will over power everybody
in the middle?
- Remember the rules state the musician is too busy in
time keeping to sing.
- But don't you think the tenor section will suffer if I
do not sing?
- Suffering is all we've been doing during this.
- What we need most is an instrumentalist is someone who
shouldn't distracted by singing.
Someone who knows just when to ring the bell to separate
the verses.
Remember, no jealousy.
- But I like singing.
- Yasha, you don't need to worry about the tenor section.
Just raise your arm like this.
- I'm left handed.
- I don't know if we can use a left handed musician for
these songs.
- I'm right handed.
I can do it.
- I can learn to play with my right hand.
- I know you can.
If you just concentrate on playing.
So men, the bell ringer is the pivot who faces me.
Yasha, when I point to you ring the bell.
(Music)
* love never failing ...
* our helper he is ...
- Immortal help prevailing!
- Yasha, can I show you a trick used by the bell
ringers in Canada?
- Canada?
- Open your mouth.
Close your mouth.
Can you breathe?
Good.
* a mighty fortress is our god ...
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid is it the flood ...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* he came to save us all ...
* his craft and power are great ...
- Line up!
- Thank you for accepting my offer.
- Thank you for stepping into my trap.
Sing for me.
- To restate my request, if you win the men will sing.
If I win, you keep your promise.
- Sit.
- Please forgive an old man the insensitivity of
his youth.
- Today the rules are reversed.
Instead of my challenger suffering the consequence for
losing a peace, he suffers the consequence for every pce
I lose.
(Music)
- Ooh!
(Music)
- Ooh!
(Music)
- It's over.
Check mate in 5 moves.
Check.
- Speed chess.
- Start the count.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Ow!
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
- Check.
- 5, 4, 3, 2 - stop the count!
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
- What did he say?
- Checkmate in 2 moves.
(Music)
- It is not myself I want to go free.
I wish you to free someone else.
I would ask you to free
(music)
- I'm not a monster.
(Birds chirping)
- Rachel, I am so ashamed.
It was all my fault.
I shouldn't have asked him.
- So he's the one.
You know what I would do if my accuser found his way in here?
I would start by making his life a little more miserable
than usual.
Then I would arrange for a little accident.
Maybe you would like me to arrange an accident?
- Rachel, someone from the prison, someone high up wanted
the teacher.
- Rudy?
- They let you go?
- They promised they would set yasha free if I did, so I
asked your father to speak so they would have the excuse
they needed to arrest him.
- Yasha, yasha, I just saw your papa.
- Papa? Where?
Has he come to take me home?
- Stop.
I said stop!
(Music)
(Gunshot)
- Checkmate.
(Monk singing)
- Yasha, I guess your papa must have run out of vodka .
- That's right, yasha.
I remember whenever people were taken from our village,
your papa always got them a bottle of vodka.
Where did all that vodka come from?
Yasha, everybody knows how he got his vodka.
It was his reward for turning in practically every man in
our village including me.
Including you.
- Teacher!
No!
(Bell rings)
(Music)
- Rachel, my dead brother he is not really dead.
- Why? Why do I need to forgive them?
These liars.
Rotting in hell.
- It was yasha's mother's love for her son that Nikolai
had used to take my grandfather away.
(Birds chirping)
- Back in my village there was a man who drank too much
so he took a stick to his wife and to his boy and it made the
boy's head stupid.
Finally the boy was sent away on a vacation and he found a
new family.
And even though they did not have a nice place to live and
did not have enough to eat his new family sang songs.
And his friend taught him to play a bell.
And he was happy.
I love you, papa.
(Music)
- That little ceremony out there, you know why he did it?
Because he's not all there.
- Shut up, Bruno.
- You are telling me to shut up?
Well, I didn't exactly see you participate!
And you, you're supposed to be our leader.
I didn't see you until it was almost over.
Tell them.
Tell them, Jakob.
Tell them it's not so easy to forgive.
You and your music.
You're the one that's made them all crazy like this with
your bloody son of god dying for our sins on some rotten
slab of wood.
Come on, old man!
Tell them we'll soon be free of this prison because the
devil himself is coming to loose us.
And when he does, we'll crush these Soviet!
Huh?
How do you like that?
Ahh!
(Quietly praying)
- I thank you for singing in my choir and for helping to
make my time here something I wouldn't trade for anything.
The ladder, Bruno.
Jakob's ladder.
The way to paradise is through the gates of mercy.
Forgive me.
- For what?
- For not setting a better example.
If you get out before me, tell my family I'm not
angry anymore.
(Gasping)
- I forgive you!
Do you hear that?
We forgive you!
* a mighty fortress is our god ...
(Bell rings)
* a love never failing ...
* our helper he amid the flood ...
* immortal help prevailing ...
* against our ancient foe ...
* his strength and power are great ...
* on earth is not his equal ...
* a mighty fortress is our god ...
* his love never failing ...
(Music)
- Look, if we don't make it out of here alive and I never
had the chance to say this, after your chess match with
the comrade none of us could hear the name of the man you
were setting free but I was watching you so I could see
the name on your lips.
- Bruno.
- And I just wanted to say you are the best teacher
I've ever had.
But I am a bad student.
So who is going to forgive me?
Papa!
(Music)
- Millions who entered the Soviet gulag died in
confinement or exile.
My grandfather was one of them.
A survivor had told them how Jakob had taught them chess
and how sometimes the only way to win is to lose.
(Music)