Might as well face it, you’re addicted to chess.

While watching The Chess Players (1977), it’s easy to think that nothing is happening. That’s not true, of course; a man dies, shots are fired, two marriages are about to collapse, and the fate of an entire kingdom hangs in the balance. Mir (Saeed Jaffrey) and Mirza (Sanjeev Kumar) don’t notice, though, because they’re too busy playing chess.

The opening, narrated by Amitabh Bachchan and interspersed with bits of animation, explains the political situation. Wajid Ali Shah (Amjad Khan) is the Nawab of Oudh, one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The Nawab is much more interested in art and music and prayer and his many wives than in the day to day business of ruling, and the British East India company, reluctantly represented by General Outram (Richard Attenborough) plan to use this as justification for deposing him and taking over the kingdom.

Meanwhile, Mir and Mirza, two idle noblemen, play chess. They play a lot of chess, all day, every day, completely ignoring everything else. Kurshid (Shabana Azmi), Mirza’s wife, is desperately lonely and craves her husband’s attention, but he’s too wrapped up in the game to notice. Mir is even more oblivious; when he walks in on his wife (Farida Jalal) with another man, he’s too wrapped up in the game to even think that anything is amiss.

The Chess Players is warm and funny and at times, thanks to the passive protagonists, really, really slow. This is an inaction movie, a sometimes affectionate character study of men who are too caught up in trivialities to notice the changes taking place in the world around them, and ultimately too weak to do anything but go along with the flow.