Chess champion biopic should appeal to a general audience

Rating: 8/10 (16 February 2016)

This is a fictionalized biography of the famous chess champion Bobby Fischer. Early scenes from Fischer's childhood are given, but the focus is on the proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union waged on the chessboard between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in Reykjavik in 1972. With any fictionalized biography I always wonder what is truth and what is fiction, but from doing some research on the web (mainly Wikipedia) it seems that this movie presents things pretty accurately, especially given the tendency for most movies based on fact to change things for dramatic effect. Chess does not lend itself to mass appeal, but this movie does a good job of pacing things to maintain the interest of a general audience.
A knowledge of chess is not required to appreciate this movie. All that is necessary to know is that chess in an inordinately complicated game that requires intense concentration. Games at the championship level can last five hours or longer. Not a game for those with a limited attention span. The movie maintains interest, with little emphasis on the details of chess. Liev Schreiber makes a great Spassky and and Toby Maguire is fine as Fischer, but I think it was problematic to cast McGuire as Fischer. McGuire's small stature and general personality is at odds with Fischer's being physically robust and intellectually intimidating. There seems to be an attempt to cast this as a typical sports movie as underdog bucks the odds to defeat the master, but Fischer was a top ranked Grand Master and it was not at all unexpected that he would put up a fight. That being said there *was* a "solitary U.S. contestant takes on the Soviet chess machine" aspect to the match.
I am old enough to remember the Fischer/Spassky match and the political circus surrounding it. It will probably be hard for a younger generation to fully appreciate the significance of the cold war as the backdrop contributing to the tensions of this match, but the movie does a good job of building the tension for the match. For a brief moment in history chess was *the* sport. Hard to fathom from some forty years on. I did learn some things from this movie, such as Spassky's standing and applauding Fischer for his masterful play in winning game six of the championship. And I never knew that Henry Kissinger had called Fischer to encourage him to go to the match.
This movie wants to trace Fischer's paranoia to two things: his childhood, growing up with communist parents in the cold war era, and the stress of chess competition. However, after having seen the straight up documentary "Bobby Fischer Against the World," I think the representation of Fischer's mental instability in "Pawn Sacrifice" is overemphasized. In BFAW Fischer is seen as much more disciplined and focused than is hinted at here. For example he maintained a physical fitness regime to equal that of most professional athletes. As serious as Fischer's mental illness apparently became I have to believe that it was more organically based rather than environmentally based. Based on some of his outrageous anti-Semitic and anti-American comments in his later years there is little doubt that his grasp on reality had been seriously compromised, but he had the wherewithal to stage a rematch with Spassky in 1992, which he won.
What accounts for the continued interest in Fischer? For example, Gary Kasparov is close to being Fischer's equal at chess, and his life as a writer and political activist after retiring from chess has been remarkable, in a positive sense. But Kasparov has not obtained anywhere near the status in popular culture as Fischer. Why is that? Is it interest in Fischer's fall from grace? Do tragic lives interest us more than successful ones? Is it due to Fischer's mad genius persona? I guess oddballs are more interesting than grinds.
As a counterpoint to "Pawn Sacrifice" I recommend the excellent and captivating movie, "Searching for Bobby Fischer." That movie, also based on a true story, shows that a more well-rounded person can excel at chess at a high level.
Another movie that details how sports and politics were bound together during the cold war is "Red Army." Hockey in that case.