A Great Chess Movie: A Review of Searching for Bobby Fischer

Frank Brady

Searching for Bobby Fischer
Directed by Steven Zaillian
Written by Steven Zaillian based on the book by Fred Waitzkin
Starring Joe Mantegna, Laurence Fishburne, Joan Allen, Max Pomeranc, Ben Kingsley
Paramount Pictures, 1993, 110 minutes, rated PG
Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall), 1993 Academy Awards
Available on video

Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film based on the book of the same name by Fred Waitzkin, is the true story of his son Josh's initiation into the ancient cabals of chessplayers. This epic ramble through the world of chess shows realistically how the game can elicit our fascination and love, and sometimes our bitterness and frustration. It is a pleasant but intense dream, much more than a treatise on the game's immense appeal: the film examines the anxiousness and desperation lurking in the labyrinthine path to excellence, and probes the sacred relationships of father to son, student to teacher, and prodigy to himself.

Josh Waitzkin, a New York chess wunderkind who is now 16 years old and has recently completed the requirements for the International Master title, started playing the game when he was six, after learning the moves--like Capablanca--simply by watching others play. Genius, or the gift of prodigy, sometimes comes from God, or the head of Zeus, the film seems to say. But the second necessity for the development of a great chessplayer is a lifelong study of the game. We watch Josh as he confronts this daunting regimen. The movie follows the basic plot of the book, which describes Josh's rise from chess beginner to challenger for the national primary school championship, while omitting chapters concerning trips to Moscow, Bimini, and Pasadena, and other side issues that would have impeded the film's narrative flow.

The eight-year-old who portrays Josh in the film (Max Pomeranc, also a New Yorker) is perfectly typecast. He not only looks remarkably like Josh did at the same age, but is currently among the top 100 chessplayers of his own age group in the country. His manner of handling the chess pieces and clock is completely authentic, right down to the way he uses a captured piece to hit the button. Best of all, his performance is more than an impersonation. He becomes Josh Waitzkin, and gets inside him as only a precocious chessplayer who has shared similar formative experiences could. His body language illustrates some of the angst and range of feelings that chess creates in its devotees: he bites his lips when he is tense, stares off into space when bored, and looks proud, almost defiant--but not arrogant--after making a strong move.

He wears dirty sneakers, reminiscent of the once sartorially slipshod Bobby Fischer, whom the young Josh takes as his idol. Sporadically, we actually see and hear the real Bobby in this film--in footage taken for the most part from old television news and talk shows. This glimpse of the "old" Bobby just before and after Reykjavik has a ghostly feel.

One of the most piquant aspects of Searching for Bobby Fischer is the way it elevates the game. It is a homage to difficulty mastered, perseverance rewarded. Other films about chess, such as the Swiss-made Dangerous Moves and the recent American thriller Knight Moves (reviewed in ACJ 1, pp. 105-107), tend to banalize the game and turn chess into nothing more than a backdrop for a psychological drama or torrid romance. In Searching for Bobby Fischer, though, we actually see the Latvian Gambit being played and a Rubinstein ending being studied. All the moves are real, not screen concoctions. Look fast and hard and you'll notice the famous Reti-Tartakower 11-move grandmaster checkmate. When Josh is playing in the national championship against the character Jonathan Poe (based on the odd Canadian prodigy Jeff Sarwer from the book), he is a tempo behind in a pawn race; although his opponent queens first, Josh is able to check, forcing his opponent to move his king, which lets Josh pick up the queen.

Similarly, there are also discussions of chess theory, almost unheard of in other films that touch upon chess. Like many young players, Josh enjoys bringing his queen out early in the game. His chess coach Bruce Pandolfini, brilliantly played almost like a Zen master by Ben Kingsley (Oscar winner for Gandhi), tries to teach Josh the reasons why such maneuvers are unsound. As he and legions of others have written, Pandolfini explains to Josh that early queen moves can waste time and hand the initiative to the opponent, who can develop new pieces while attacking the queen at the same time. Elementary, of course, but probably enlightening to most of the film's audience. Probing more complex chess issues, during one meditative lesson Pandolfini asks Josh to explain why Black stands better in a position they are examining. Josh responds categorically, "Black has the advantage because White has more islands. If you have more pawn islands, you have weaknesses."

The relationship between Josh and his teacher is explored deeply in the film, with the result that neither character is a one-dimensional caricature; they are both revealed to have strengths and weaknesses, on and off the board. The coach agrees to accept Josh as a student primarily because he, Pandolfini, is searching for another Bobby Fischer in his own life. "Your son creates like Fischer," Pandolfini tells Josh's father during an intimate moment. "He sees like him. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared." Josh wants to excel but also intermittently feels trapped and bullied into study and memorization. Pandolfini wants Josh to take the game more seriously, to concentrate, to visualize. In one dramatic moment, he sweeps the pieces to the floor and demands that Josh solve the problem at hand by staring at the empty board. At times, Josh wants nothing more than a quick vacation to play with his adult friends, the chess hustlers in Washington Square Park (one of whom, Vinnie, is played by Laurence Fishburne).

In a particularly brutal scene, Pandolfini tries to convince Josh that it is wrong to judge a move on the basis of how it affects us emotionally. He makes light of the "Master Chess Certificate" he has devised for excellent students, so coveted by Josh. He wants the boy to play the next move, rather than waste time talking of future rewards. He tells the boy that the certificate is worthless. On the verge of tears, and without empty bravura, Josh demands his accolade. Josh and his teacher are hardly stick figures. They are flesh and blood characters, true to themselves and to the dialectic of their relationship.

Josh's father Fred, played by Joe Mantegna in a less world-weary interpretation than most of his previous acting performances, is a man at odds with himself. He is proud of his son, hoping that the boy will someday become world champion. But he is torn because he wants Josh to lead a happy life, and he is unsure of himself as a guide and mentor. In this sense, the film departs from the book, in which Fred's mix of emotions runs to greater extremes: love and pride alternate with rage and near-hatred as the father struggles to accept his son's superior tlent.

The look, or mise-en-scene, of Searching for Bobby Fischer is one of verisimilitude. The chess clubs and tournaments, the players themselves (one can spot such real-life stars as Joel Benjamin and Roman Dzindzichashvili), and the smoke and din of the chess world are so accurately created that one can almost smell and taste the hallowed and combative places where serious chess is played. The ambient sound is enhanced and echoed as the chess clock is hammered and the pieces banged onto the board, louder and louder, like so many gunshots: the result is striking and unforgettable. Extreme closeups of Josh in concentration, filmed in shadowy lighting, lend an expressionistic feeling to the film. At one point, Pandolfini's voice is heard over closeups of the pieces, suggesting that each pawn and knight and rook is charged with a life of its own in a world in miniature.

Searching for Bobby Fischer cleanly captures the essence of a little boy's struggle to become a champion. The episodic narrative of his life and times has a faster pace than in the book, giving the story more impact and believability. Even though the film relied on a few fictive additions to achieve points of drama, it deserves praise for its heroic theme and for so handsomely apprehending the reality and persona of Josh Waitzkin.

Indeed, the film is most powerful when depicting the expressive sparks in Josh as he engages in combat on and off the board with his father, his teacher, and his opponents. But the boy is a decent and loving child, disturbed by Pandolfini's edict that in order to succeed, he must have contempt for his opponent. "Bobby Fischer shows contempt," the teacher intones. "I'm not him," Josh retorts bravely. Through Josh's life, Searching for Bobby Fischer for the first time brings the true world of the chess struggle triumphantly to the screen.

Frank Brady founded Chessworld magazine, edited Chess Life, and wrote the bestselling Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer. He is a film scholar and a professor at St. John's University in New York.

This article appears in ACJ 2 (1993), pp. 105-108.

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