Pawn Sacrifice: biopic (of sorts) about chess wonder Bobby Fischer, directed by Edward Zwick, starring Toby McGuire as Fischer and Liev Schreiber as his arch nemesis, Boris Spassky. It shares more than one narrative structural element with Martin Scorcese's The Aviator: while on the one hand the main character gets more and more successful in his chosen field, on the other he also goes from excentric to mentally unstable. The movie's third act starts with a seemingly complete breakdown, luring the audience who probably decades later only knows the main character did lose it entirely into believing this was it, then character rallies and achieves stunning victory in chosen field... but the very last scene reveales he's also well and truly in the land of the insane now.

Mind you, Zwick isn't Scorsese; his movie doesn't offer much in terms of cinematography, and it also trusts the audience less; whereas Howard Hughes' state of mind at the end of The Aviator is signalled by the repetitions of one sentence - "the face of the future", which immediately tells us all there is to say, Pawn Sacrifice gives us the full post credit scrawl plus some footag of real life Bobby Fischer to inform us what happened with him.

On the other hand, while The Aviator featured some of Hughes' darker traits - the control issues, most of all - it pulled back at featuring any antisemitism. Whereas Pawn Sacrifice doesn't pretend Bobby Fischer only believed in the Russians as global conspiracy villains; as he starts to rant about the Jewish global conspiracy as well, his bewildered sister Joan protests in tears "We are Jewish", to no avail. The movie provides the anti-Russian feeling with Cold War context (more about this in a moment), but other than letting Bobby listen to an antisemetic speech on the radio, doesn't try to explain where the antisemitism hails from, except for Bobby's mother issues. What's most interesting to me is the movie's awareness, both on a Watsonian and on a Doylist level, that characters play out a story trope which however the reality of them chafes against. The reason why Bobby Fischer for a short time becomes a national hero isn't just his being a chess genius (grand master at age 14), but that at a point where the Cold War has been going badly for the US ("we've lost China, we're losing Vietnam, we're not going to lose this one, too" says a character re: Fischer versus Spassky) and Watergate has already happened though Nixon is still clinging to power, he provides the ideal counter narrative: the kid from Brooklyn taking on the Evil Empire singlehandedly (reminds you of anyone?).

And it's certainly a story grounded in reality: pre-Fischer, the Soviets did have a lock on the world championship, and he was literally a kid from Brooklyn. And he's not completely imagining things; his lawyer/agent has ties to the US government, while his rival, Boris Spassky, is completely supervised by the KGB and is never alone. But on the other hand, Spassky, far from being the soulless robot type a la Cold War Sylvester Stallone movies, is presented as sympathetic, not solely a brilliant chess player but one with an innate sense of fairness, and capable of the kind of sporting admiration for his opponent's gift which Fischer just isn't. And of course, he's sane. Liev Schreiber at first has a silent cameo role as Spassky is only depicted from afar, but in the last third of the movie becomes a second protagonist. The transition happens when a defeated Bobby Fischer accidentally comes across him on a California beach and explodes into an "I'll destroy you" rant while a bewildered Spassky just stares in "what the hell?" bewilderment. Liev Schreiber also has the major acting to do during their big match in Iceland. Chess doesn't offer a movie any action sequences, so Zwick has to build the drama around two men staring at each other and the chess board, and at this point Bobby Fischer has gone from paranoid to cooly controlled and enigmatic, which means McGuire looks blank, and it's up to Liev Schreiber to signal the transition from Spassky winning to Spassky losing via his face.

The movie only intermittently dares to visualize Bobby Fischer's pov - for the child Bobby, and later during some of the matches and in the hotel room convinced "they" - whoever the "they" du jour are - are everywhere -, but doesn't gamble in terms of visual means to do so, but remains deeply conventional. (Child!Bobby sees numbers across the pawns, adult Bobby gets a few close ups to his eyes and quick cuts.) I'm not a director, so I have no idea how I'd have done it, and maybe it was wise not to attempt it, but at the same time, I can't help but wish someone with a bit more flair and readiness for risk (because of course there's the danger of going over the top and becoming ridiculous when trying to visualize genius and increasing madness ) would have tackled the subject - say, Oliver Stone in high form (talk about someone with a gift for paranoia) or Guillelmo del Torro. Mostly, though you see Bobby Fischer through other people's pov, which allows the movie the balance of pity and being appalled; which is why scenes like the phonecall between Bobby and his sister Joan or Bobby and William Lombardy (Peter Saarskard), the former chess whiz gone Catholic priest who is is coach, who talks Bobby down from another outburst by them talking solely in chess moves, are both necessary and truly effective in selling you on the pity part of the equation. The difference between this and movies following the "jerk genius behaves appalingly to people around him who put up with it because he's just that good" is that the movie quite early on makes clear this isn't merely excentric behavior on the part of the wunderkind but signs of mental illness, which goes untreated and thus escalates. (When Joan asks the lawyer/agent to get her brother treatment she's basically told that a) everything is under control, and b) it would spoil his genius, and who's going to defeat the Russians then?)


By coincidence, the judge of the Spassky-Fischer tournament in Iceland, Lothar Schmidt, was a well known citizen in my hometown, Bamberg. He was a former grandmaster himself but earned his living by publishing Karl May, which his son Bernard does now, and Bernard Schmidt actually met Bobby Fischer, though not in Iceland. (He was deemed too young to go with his father at the time which was v.v. frustrating, because his older brother was allowed to come along and thus witnessed the "match of the century".) Fischer spent a short time hiding in Franconia in the 1990s, courtesy of Lothar Schmidt, which was when Bernard Schmidt met him, so of course I asked about his impression of portrayal versus reality. He deemed it pretty accurate to what he recalls of the man, though he added with a smile that while his father is showing to speak fluent Russian in the movie, he really couldn't in rl, but hey.

As for myself: I wouldn't call the movie a must, but I thought it did interesting things within the biopic formula and also wasn't afraid to depict its main character without prettifying/editing out/glorifying his dark side, in lack of a better term.