Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993): Movie Review

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Site Reviewer: [5 stars] He’s better at this than I’ve ever been at anything in my life. He’s better at this than you’ll ever be, at anything. Dusty has a gift. He has a gift, and when you acknowledge that, then maybe we will have something to talk about.

Rating: PG
Director: Steven Zaillian
Writers: Fred Waitzkin, Steven Zaillian
Stars: Joe Mantegna, Max Pomeranc, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, Laurence Fishburne
Release Date: August 11, 1993 (United States)
Run time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

Seven-year-old Josh Waitzkin becomes fascinated with the chess players in New York City’s Washington Square Park. His mother, Bonnie, is initially uncomfortable with his interest, as the games in the park are rife with illegal gambling and homeless players, but eventually allows Josh to play a game with a disheveled player (who charges $5 to play the game). Although Josh loses, Bonnie is amazed that he understands the rules of chess, despite having never been taught them. Another park player, Vinnie Livermore, alerts Bonnie to Josh’s advanced talent in the game.

Josh’s father, Fred, asks to play a game with his son and swiftly defeats him. It emerges, however, that Josh deliberately lost to spare his father’s feelings. When Fred prompts Josh to play a rematch honestly, Josh effortlessly defeats him.

A friendship blooms between Josh and Vinnie, who becomes a mentor. Fred requests the services of Bruce Pandolfini as a formal chess tutor for his son. Bruce takes an immediate liking to Josh, but disapproves of many of Josh’s maverick tactics, adopted from Vinnie’s tutelage. In particular, Bruce disapproves of Josh’s tendency to bring out his queen too early, and warns Fred that such careless tactics will weaken Josh’s performance in organized chess tournaments.

Against Bruce’s advice, Fred enrolls Josh in a chess tournament. Josh wins; the first in a slew of tournament victories for him. Fred develops an unhealthy obsession with Josh’s chess career, causing friction between Fred, Bonnie, and Josh’s school teacher. Josh, upset by the changes he has noticed in his father, begins losing tournaments.

As a remedy, Fred dedicates Josh entirely to Bruce’s teaching regimen, and at Bruce’s request, Josh is forbidden from playing any more games with Vinnie. Bruce’s relationship with Josh grows cold and misanthropic as Bruce seeks to harden Josh’s competitiveness. When Bruce berates Josh by showering him in “meaningless Xeroxes” of a certificate that Bruce had previously told Josh was a special award, Bonnie kicks Bruce out of the house.

Fred and Josh reconcile, with Fred assuring Josh that he loves his son, even if he is not a chess champion. And when Josh is allowed to resume playing chess with Vinnie, his enthusiasm for the game returns.

Josh attends the National Chess Championship, where he and Bruce reconcile. In the final tournament game, Josh is paired against Jonathan Poe, another young prodigy whose talent has intimidated Josh. The game is a back-and-forth struggle: Josh’s use of Vinnie’s reckless tactics causes him to lose his queen early in the game, but he follows up with more tactics to win Jonathan’s queen. The game continues into a complex endgame. After an overconfident move from Jonathan, Josh remembers Bruce’s disciplined teachings, and uses them to calculate a path to an assured victory. Before executing the sequence, he offers his opponent a draw. Jonathan, insulted, and not realizing his own predicament, refuses. Josh plays out a winning combination and wins the game.

My Review:

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a great movie and true story about life, parenting, the responsibility we have for our gifts and those of our children, competition… and chess. This is a well-acted, well-directed, beautiful film, with a fantastic musical score. The story – a true story – is smart, subtle, and moving, based on a book written by Fred Waitzkin, the father of the real life chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin. I highly recommend the movie.

The core tension of the film is a collective disagreement over how to handle a child chess prodigy’s life. His mother’s motivation is caring for him as a person, and not losing her son’s innate goodness and decency in the pursuit of a game. His father’s motivation is an arc, starting initially with a desire to maximize his son’s success, fearful that failure to do so would be failing him. However, he eventually sees that Josh will never maximize his talent without continuing to love the game, too, so he changes his approach with his son to facilitate that. Josh also has two teachers. The first of those teachers is Vinnie, a player Josh meets in Washington Square Park in New York City. Vinnie values chess as a community game and he encourages an aggressive style of play. His other teacher is Bruce, a more classically trained player, who values chess as a defensive game and an individual game.

The beauty of the film is that we find Josh, the player and the person, in a mixture of all of these people. He is a bit of everyone around him. The would-be advisers to Josh, one by one, come to see that everyone else tugging on him has contributed to him, and also that they perhaps had some true insight into his nature that maybe they lacked. The end result of this is a community of people supporting Josh in a positive way, though each from different perspectives.

Illustrating the problem for everyone around Josh, in what is probably my favorite scene from the film, just after his first tournament loss, Josh and his father debate the match. Josh suggests that maybe the other kid was just better than he is. His dad insists that this is not true. As this back and forth is occurring, Josh abruptly asks him why he is standing so far away from him. His father has a self-realization moment, seeing his own failure to act as Josh’s father, and he tells his son to “come here.” They hug, the dad tells him it’s okay, and the boy apologizes – apparently for losing. That powerful scene is in many ways a summary of the push and pull of motivations in the film. Nearly all of the characters experience this to varying degrees but that was my favorite moment because it was so relatable. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a story about how to cultivate an extraordinary gift and it asks you to consider what the responsibility a person has toward it. Is Josh required to try being a world champion just because he is immensely gifted? How much should he sacrifice in pursuit of that goal? Can he even know or consent to that as a child? It also asks what responsibility parents have toward their child’s gifts. Protecting Josh emotionally might lead to happiness now and resentment, later in his life, that he was not pushed to be the best. Bruce seems to project a deep sense of regret, over his own failures,, in his extreme desire to see Josh do what he did not. Of course, pushing too hard might lead to isolation, a loss of love for the game itself, a contempt for the world, and a failure to fit into society. The movie portrays this as Bobby Fischer’s outcome.

The film’s message is an argument for balance. Josh is given every opportunity to be successful at chess that his parents can provide. However, they also decide that success in his case is less important than his life as a whole, and this was obvious to them when he lost enjoyment of the game when he was pushed too hard. Ultimately, Josh needs to direct how much winning matters. Within the film, this works out well. Josh was not going to be at his best in chess unless he enjoyed it. He ends up being juxtaposed with his rival, who he beats at the end of the film, who does not seem to enjoy the game, and who does not seem to be loved and supported as well as Josh. The film makes the case that Josh’s approach is better, and would have been better even if he had lost the final match.

The problem brought forward by the story kind of resolves into a happy ending on its own. Josh is a better chess player when his life is fuller and more well-rounded. The best way forward is to find a balance between what everyone has been saying. This is not always how life or competition works. Often the joyless kid, with the overbearing parents, finds a competitive edge over the competition because of that single-minded approach. This is to some extent the scenario represented by the person of Bobby Fischer within the film. Bobby Fischer is presented as someone who won at chess but lost himself. We don’t end the film in search of Josh Waitzkin.

If you haven’t see the film, I recommend it.