Fischer King

I remember, a few years ago, watching Searching for Bobby Fischer. It was the critical darling, the little picture that could. It tells a rather small story, not of Bobby Fischer, who famously beat Boris Spassky in the 70s to become the first American world champion of chess. In those days and even now, Russians were the ones to beat. They take chess far more seriously than Americans, which isn't to say Americans aren't any good, just that they aren't at the level of world champion.

Bobby Fischer was a strange one. He was extremely paranoid. He thought Russians were trying to use mind-control on him. He was irritable. He'd spout all sorts of stuff. Needless to say, that part of him didn't make him all that popular.

You'd think, with a title like Searching for Bobby Fischer, that the story would be about the next great American chess prodigy, the Tiger Woods of chess. But alas, no. It is based on a true story of a sportswriter who wanted his kid to play baseball, before discovering his affinity and talent for chess.

The film is, in hindsight, amazingly star-studded. Laurence Fishburne and Ben Kingsley play the main characters, outside of Max Pomeranc, a kid who was cast partly because he really did play chess, which is one of those casting dilemmas. Rocky 5 cast Tommy Morrison, the grandson of John Wayne, as the young boxer that Rocky takes an interest in, far more than his own son, and leads him to success, before he is swayed by the sweet talk of a Don King-like character. While the concept was intriguing, in principle, it was horrid in execution.

Morrison, a real-life boxer, never provided the right dramatics for a Darth Vader like character, whose descends into greed and corruption. Worse still, Talia Shire is shrill as the ever-suffering Adrian, and the son is similarly awful.

There's no question that Max Pomeranc is not Haley Joel Osment. He's not a truly gifted child actor, by any stretch of the imagination. Initially, this seems to be a bad decision. He seems a bit too innocent, a bit too unable to provide the right emotions.

The director seems to know this too, and has the actors suitably underplay their roles as well. There are scenes where Max talks to his sister in a way that seems believable in real life, if perhaps not in the dramatics of the story.

I had seen Searching for Bobby Fischer about ten years ago, when it first came out, and thought it was good. I recall an odd comment by Orson Scott Card. At the time--and even now, there was speculation about the film version of Ender's Game. When this film came out, Card said that the film said what he wanted to from the book.

I had wondered how the two were related. Ender's Game tells a science fiction story. Earth has been at war with an alien race called the "buggers", presumably insect like creatures.

They have had infrequent encounters, and have decided that to prepare for their next encounter with the buggers, they must find the next leaders of strategy and war. At the time the story was conceived, sometime in the late 70s and early 80s, video games were starting to become popular, and kids were among its best practitioners, spendings many hours and quarters playing Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong. Kids seemed to understand how to play these far better than adults.

Card merely extrapolated the ideas of kids as genius to war. The story follows the story of three siblings, Andrew (called Ender, because his sister, Valentine misprounounced his name), Valentine, and Peter. Peter is the eldest, and unlike Ender, he is cruel and manipulative. Ender is the innocent, who is nonetheless, also cocky and self-confident. But where Peter is ultimately power-seeking, Ender loves his enemies, and that gives him strength.

This feels like a much different story than that of Josh Waitzkin. Waitzkin is the child of a sportwriter, Fred Waitzkin, who hopes his child will become a baseball star. One day, while chasing a baseball, he stumbles on chess players playing at Washington Square, and is immediately fascinated by the game, and the players that play it, and eventually begins to play.

The title of the film, Searching for Bobby Fischer, is not so much about Waitzkin being the next Bobby Fischer, as it is about what it takes to play chess at that level, and the effects it has on Josh.

The film explores what it takes for kids to be excellent at what they do. Sports films rarely touch on the topic of kids pushed to success. Sports films are almost always about why sports are great, and feature the big game at the end, where the underdogs pull it out in the end. Even a film like Friday Night Lights which tracks a high school football team's travails in small town Texas, where poverty means that the only thing anyone looks to is the success of the football team, and the immense pressure that comes from the community that has little else.

The kids in such teams are seen as innocents, trying their best to win, to not let down the community, even as the community itself is portrayed as caring far too much about winning.

Rarely are kids on such teams seen as the product of parents who push and whether such decisions even make sense.

Chess works out better because one can imagine that parents might wonder whether their kids should choose to excel, much as they might wonder if a math prodigy is wrong for spending so much time at math. It's funny how films often question this kind of prodigy. Pi went so far as to say that the search for math genius leads to insanity. Athletic genius, of course, doesn't come with this burden.

Fred Waitzkin, who initially wants his son to be a baseball player, realizes his son has good at chess, and searches for a suitable teacher. He finds it in Bruce Pandolfini. It's amazing that Pandolfini agreed to this portrayal, which makes him out to be a guy that has been burned out by chess. He knows, as someone who was once at the top of the game, but not a world champion, what it takes, and is eventually invigorated by what he perceives to be the next Bobby Fischer.

His desire to make Josh good leads to a line that really brings home its relation to Ender's Game. He tells Josh that he must have contempt for his opponent, that Bobby Fischer had contempt for his opponents, that his opponents hated him. Josh says that he doesn't hate his opponents.

"Searching" hits all the right notes for motivation, from Pandolfini encouraging Josh to succeed by earning master points, which Josh covets, until Josh wants it so bad, that Pandolfini pulls the rug underneath him, telling him the certificate Josh wants is worthless. Joan Allen, alas, is doomed. She must play the good mother, who sees that Josh is a good person, who cares about others more than even she does. Josh likes to hang out with the less than savory chess players at Washington Square, seeing them as people who are, at least, good at chess, even as she is scared of them (but eventually comes to see how meaningful they are to his life).

Josh has ultimately, three father figures in the film, his real father, Bruce Pandolfini, and Vinnie, played by Laurence Fishburne, who embodies street chess. They all want him to succeed, but in different ways.

The degree of difficulty is rather high, because the film has to dramatize chess, a game that is notoriously brainy, and inscrutable to many. The director finds its way by using speed chess and Fishburne's trash-talking Vinnie to heighten the dramatics.

Chess is a timed game, at least, when played in competition. I believe the rule two hours to make the first forty moves, which is about 3 minutes a move. Even at that relatively fast pace, the game would be far too slow on film. Speed chess can be played even faster, at a minute a move or less, and the film accelerates that to a second or two a move, trying to take away the one element that matters most--thought.

I had a sense, watching the film again, how much I was being manipulated, but how I didn't seem to mind. The film is based on a true story, but it is definitely dramatized. Vinnie, I'm sure, is not a real character.

Bruce Pandolfini is portrayed by Ben Kingsley as someone, much like the Stellan Skaarsgaard character in Good Will Hunting or Salieri in Amadeus, a man who is talented, but more importantly recognizes talent, and hopes to cultivate the talent even further. He's much like a dad who loves baseball, but lacks talent, and hopes his kid can play in the major leagues. Was the real Pandolfini like that? I somehow doubt it.

Then, there's the other kid. He's the rival. Played by evil Fred Savage (it isn't Fred, but i t sure looks like him), this kid's purpose is mostly to glare. He's the embodiment of the child chess machine, the Ivan Drago of Rocky 4.

Josh is scared of this other kid, scared because he feels he can't beat him. He's also feeling the pressure of expectations from his dad and Pandolfini. He's being asked to play like an adult, to deal with pressure, and yet he's a kid. Pandolfini is even made out to be the bad chess father, the guy who can't make it to Josh's competition, but since the real Pandolfini did have a role in the film, his character does come through.

The kids three dads come with him to the big competition. Which strategy does he try to use against evil Fred Savage? Does he play the cavalier style of street chess where you play the opponent and not the board? Does he play the erudite style of Pandolfini and classic chess where you play the board and not the opponent?

He does a little of both. He brings out his queen early, a move seen as too rash by Pandolfini, and in fact, loses the queen early, normally a devastating move, then, as he regains parity with the queen, he sits and sees the winning move that Pandolfini is describing in a waiting room. Then, he does something unexpected for all concerned. He offers a draw. He offers a tie. The two can share a championship, since he sees there's a win. Of course, the other kid will have none of that. He's winning, after all.

Somehow, the climatic game, the one that you know is going to happen, combines all the aspects of who Josh has become. He plays the strategy of Vinnie, then sees the board like Pandolfini, but is still the good-hearted boy he's always been.

This is underlined again when he meets up with Morgan, whose dad (played by character actor, David Paymer) critiques him for not using his knight, and comforts him by saying Morgan is a better player than he was at Morgan's age, a funny comment considering both kids are like 10 years old.

For the purposes of the film, the chess is made simple enough that if you know the basic rules, you can follow the last game to some extent. You know when the queen is taken (bad). You know that in the end, when both are rushing their pawn to the end to queen, and the evil kid is able to get their first, but Josh's queen leads to a check, and then resignation (in reality, the kid would have seen that move coming much sooner).

Although I knew the film was manipulative, it tells such an interesting story of the nature of competition, from the dad who tries to understand his son and his skill at chess, to the pressures of being the best at a sport and the expectations to succeed, to simply being a kid, and just enjoying life.

If you haven't seen this film, watch it. If you haven't seen it in a while, it's worth watching again.