Bobby Fischer Against the World is a documentary rigorously trying to wedge its way beneath the skin of the idea that chess and madness might be a little closer to one another than one would first think. The amusing reactions one hears of the Americans often having in understanding that a game of Cricket can last all day, for five days, and that draws are often the end result came to mind during the Bobby Fischer Against the World; Chess, it is revealed, being a game that, when the two best players in the world face off against one another for the world title, is played out across a good dozen-or-so matches of intense gamesmanship wherein which individual matches can only really be called off as a draw after something ridiculous like five hours - at least you're outdoors and you're moving about when you play Cricket. Chess is another animal; just the two people, at a table, at the forefront of a large hall engaged in a game of such emotional and cerebral manpower that it doesn't matter what the weather is, just make sure you guard that damn king piece. You don't have to be a little off-kilter to take it up as a profession nor indeed study it religiously as a nine year old boy, but it would seem that if you want your name echoed and remembered through its future echelons, it certainly helps.
In a sense, I'm digressing; it is to director Liz Garbus' great credit that she explores the life of the titular American chess player Bobby Fischer and doesn't paint some sort of wacky image of him, nor indeed chess enthusiasts in general, as complete kooks enjoying the procession of remaining stationary for a good few hours a day over a period of a week moving small items around a board. Better that than sitting in front of a screen moving a computer generated 'piece' around an online warzone arena, I say. On the contrary, it is an informative and striking documentary; a piece with a good balance between the detailing of a man's life as he gradually gets deeper into something he enjoys, but arriving with a steady air of both desperation and gloom as he goes on to get deeper-still into something else of which has a cold and frightening nature.
When it begins, it does so with a range of voices and views; a scattergun series of opinions from an array of people from a number of different countries. They are on Fischer with some speaking ill of him, others highly – the tones are ones of anger and sympathy all-at-once, and if the presence of a chess board this early on informs us of where Fischer's skills lie, then it is this to a simplistic degree on top of the fact Garbus is calling on this item synonymous with conflict and constant shifts to establish the notion that this man's existence itself is a bit of a war-zone. Heading straight into the man's life as a boy in 1950s America, we learn of both how he conquered varying levels of infant chess, leading to a rise through certain ranks and unfettered television appearances, as well as the state of the game in his nation prior to all the larger happenings instigated by this man.
It would appear that Fischer was always a different kettle of fish; a boy who took chess boards to dinner and, through a piece of stock footage that might have been used four or five times to create the illusion he was doing it more often, appeared to 'begin' matches against himself half way through so as to devise the best tactics one might use to strike – this would result in a draughts-like series of manoeuvres resulting in the mass-removal of the opponents' pieces. He read, but he read magazines on issues such as water pollution and got involved in theories and political conspiracies to do with how the American government was supposedly up to no good. His childhood was mostly fatherless, and his mother did everything she could in bringing him up; he got very lonely as a kid, but later found solace in occupying large, open and lonely looking spaces, in the form of pastures, by himself but for a Scottish photographer, of whom snapped him with his consent.
Primarily, we learn that Chess featured very little on the American sociological sporting curriculum before Fischer, and that he helped change this. Chess is a game of intense conflict, but who needs it when you've got games of conflict in the form of NFL and Ice Hockey? It is a different story over in the Soviet Union, we're told; wherein which Chess is celebrated as a national sport of sorts, it is encouraged and funded – the most fascinating thing being that it is even categorised as a sport, in that I sense very few people would necessarily bestow such a title onto that of, say, Ludo. A large chunk of the film is dedicated to a certain match in the nation of Iceland against a certain Boris Spassky, an instance highlighting both Fischer's psychological deficiencies which would later come to plague him as well as his superb skills in the art of Chess playing. Here, Chess is likened to boxing or bullfighting; indeed, Fischer prepares for it as if some sort of duelling - it is a contest, it requires training away from a board. "How does one train away from a board?" I hear one asking, by powering up your wrist so that when you shake your opponent's hand, he feels it. The film is Garbus taking the "sport" of Chess and placing it onto screens – not in a stilted nor mundane fashion, but in a way that is cinematic and appealing; it is a winning documentary and one I thoroughly enjoyed.
In a sense, I'm digressing; it is to director Liz Garbus' great credit that she explores the life of the titular American chess player Bobby Fischer and doesn't paint some sort of wacky image of him, nor indeed chess enthusiasts in general, as complete kooks enjoying the procession of remaining stationary for a good few hours a day over a period of a week moving small items around a board. Better that than sitting in front of a screen moving a computer generated 'piece' around an online warzone arena, I say. On the contrary, it is an informative and striking documentary; a piece with a good balance between the detailing of a man's life as he gradually gets deeper into something he enjoys, but arriving with a steady air of both desperation and gloom as he goes on to get deeper-still into something else of which has a cold and frightening nature.
When it begins, it does so with a range of voices and views; a scattergun series of opinions from an array of people from a number of different countries. They are on Fischer with some speaking ill of him, others highly – the tones are ones of anger and sympathy all-at-once, and if the presence of a chess board this early on informs us of where Fischer's skills lie, then it is this to a simplistic degree on top of the fact Garbus is calling on this item synonymous with conflict and constant shifts to establish the notion that this man's existence itself is a bit of a war-zone. Heading straight into the man's life as a boy in 1950s America, we learn of both how he conquered varying levels of infant chess, leading to a rise through certain ranks and unfettered television appearances, as well as the state of the game in his nation prior to all the larger happenings instigated by this man.
It would appear that Fischer was always a different kettle of fish; a boy who took chess boards to dinner and, through a piece of stock footage that might have been used four or five times to create the illusion he was doing it more often, appeared to 'begin' matches against himself half way through so as to devise the best tactics one might use to strike – this would result in a draughts-like series of manoeuvres resulting in the mass-removal of the opponents' pieces. He read, but he read magazines on issues such as water pollution and got involved in theories and political conspiracies to do with how the American government was supposedly up to no good. His childhood was mostly fatherless, and his mother did everything she could in bringing him up; he got very lonely as a kid, but later found solace in occupying large, open and lonely looking spaces, in the form of pastures, by himself but for a Scottish photographer, of whom snapped him with his consent.
Primarily, we learn that Chess featured very little on the American sociological sporting curriculum before Fischer, and that he helped change this. Chess is a game of intense conflict, but who needs it when you've got games of conflict in the form of NFL and Ice Hockey? It is a different story over in the Soviet Union, we're told; wherein which Chess is celebrated as a national sport of sorts, it is encouraged and funded – the most fascinating thing being that it is even categorised as a sport, in that I sense very few people would necessarily bestow such a title onto that of, say, Ludo. A large chunk of the film is dedicated to a certain match in the nation of Iceland against a certain Boris Spassky, an instance highlighting both Fischer's psychological deficiencies which would later come to plague him as well as his superb skills in the art of Chess playing. Here, Chess is likened to boxing or bullfighting; indeed, Fischer prepares for it as if some sort of duelling - it is a contest, it requires training away from a board. "How does one train away from a board?" I hear one asking, by powering up your wrist so that when you shake your opponent's hand, he feels it. The film is Garbus taking the "sport" of Chess and placing it onto screens – not in a stilted nor mundane fashion, but in a way that is cinematic and appealing; it is a winning documentary and one I thoroughly enjoyed.