As mentioned before I enjoy watching The Undoing, but there are some things that strike me as a bit silly.

One thing I find a too obvious trick to set the mood are the games of chess that you see unfold.

Yes, we get it. Everybody in the story is playing chess in their real life.

Chess invokes all sorts of associations. Therefore it makes a good tool to set a mood in a story. Here it’s done a bit too ‘in your face’. It strikes me as unbelieable that the people who are already in over their head would be playing chess. You can feel they aren’t really playing.

Anyway, they are still nice scenes, esthetically.

PS

Fun fact: This is not the first time Donald Sutherland played Nicole Kidman’s father. He played her father in the movie Cold Mountain as well.