More Josh, By Gosh

One of the reasons I wanted to start a blog was to write film reviews. There are a handful of Internet film reviewers I admire: Scott Renshaw, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Roger Ebert, Bryant Frazer, Theo Panayides, and a few others. Most especially, I like Mike D'Angelo's columns.

A film review is several things: a brief summary of the film, insight into the significance (or lack thereof) of the film, and the highlights or lowlights of the film. A good review is amazing because of its quality of writing as well as its keenness of observation, making points that the average watcher would miss entirely. A great review excites the sense, makes one want to spend head to the next showing, surrounded in darkness, ready to be consumed by the magic of a vision put to celluloid.

It's tough to write well, there's no two ways about it. Some have the talent, I suppose, to craft words of such economy and clarity that an edit is superflous. The rest of us have to revise, rethink, rephrase our thoughts until it is acceptable for mass consumption. We want to look our best.

And yet, the medium of the blog, at least, the common blog, not those whose audience is expected to be wide, and thus, expecting a minimum quality, is not edited. The first thoughts that are typed out are those that are shown, no matter how haphazard or insignificant.

Whenever I choose to rewrite a review, I still do it in the framing of a blog. Write it out again, rather than take the words I've already written, and prune it, shape it, or jettison it. It's a strategy that wastes time, I admit, and yet, since I have a limited audience, it's the way I prefer. I want to write fast, and then put it up, so that I can be done with it.

This leads me back to my review of Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film that came out in 1993, over ten years ago. At the time, I recalled that it had been something of a critical darling. It shone a light on a seldom seen sport in film---chess.

Its title was mysterious too. Was this a film about Bobby Fischer? Was it about locating his current whereabouts? Was it about finding the next new talent that would be the greatest American champion since Fischer?

It's mostly about the latter. Searching for Bobby Fischer is the film adaptation of a non-fiction book written by Fred Waitzkin, a sportswriter, who finds his son is a chess prodigy. The film adaptation, like many, is a dramatization. It does not attempt to be a documentary.

In fact, like many films, it's a manipulative one, and although I knew this, it was skillfully done, so I didn't mind.

Films, by its very nature, is manipulative. It seeks to entertain, or inform, or enrage, or to elicit some kind of emotion. Even films based on true stories often change elements of the story to make it more dramatic, even if it means playing hard and fast with facts. I remember reading a review of Remember the Titans which was about the integration of two football teams because they were now one school. One was predominantly black. One was predominantly white. The coach was black, played by Denzel Washington. The film, so the review goes, made it seem like this was set in the racist south, when reality was that it was in DC, in a reasonably liberal section of town. Facts were changed to heighten conflicts. The reviewer lamented how many facts were changed, when being a little more faithful to reality would have been better.

Searching for Bobby Fischer is more than simply a recounting of the story of Josh Waitzkin, who is portrayed as the next Bobby Fischer. It is about sports parents who live through their kids accomplishments. This is rarely portrayed on film. Parents of talented kids, especially athletes, push their kids to success. Mary Pierce's dad would force her to practice, even in the rain, after losses.

It's difficult to portray such stories because parents are often the guilty culprit. Watch Spellbound, a film about the spelling bee. One of the parents of the Indian spellers organizes his practices, gives him strategies for spelling. The father is shown as living the American dream, living in a nice house that he and his brother built. The film shows the kid playing football and other sports, to show he's well-rounded. The kid seems to be fine, as a person, not too stressed out, but then, most of the time is spent with his far more articulate dad.

When he fails to win (as their is only one winner), his dad is rather comforting. True, this was being filmed, and so maybe his reaction would have been different out of the harsh glare of a camera's eye, but even so, it seemed that he realized that losing is always a possibility, even with the best of preparation.

Still, there are kids, involved in competing all the time, that define their lives by their athletic or mental skill, and are not immune to the faults of children---taunting those with less skill, being cocky or aloof, trying to be funny at the expense of others.

This film explores those aspects of chess like no other sports film before it. Fred Waitzkin wants Josh, his son, to be a baseball player, but when Josh finds that chess is his love, Fred wants him to be the best at that, as well. He searches for someone to be his chess teacher, and finds Bruce Pandolfini.

How Pandolfini ever agreed to this film, I'll never know. He ends up being the wayward dad, in an inversion of the usual story where the real dad is never around, and a surrogate dad is. Pandolfini is a real chess grandmaster, and he's portrayed as a man whose lost some faith in chess, and who sees, in Josh, the kind of raw talent that, if properly trained and molded, could lead to great success.

Bruce is fair though. He tells Fred that to be a chess champion requires great devotion, great study, to give up all else in the pursuit of being the best. He points out a chess player who is clearly socially dysfunctional, who plays 200 tournaments a year, and yet barely makes two grand. Does Fred really want that for his son?

The film shows the transition of Josh from his days at Washington Square, where he first learned to play street chess, where the play is quick and aggressive, much like street basketball is all about 1-on-1 play, and not about sound team principles. The flashy dunk wins over passing to the open man.

The film choose to make a point about the inherent goodness of Josh's heart. Washington Square is mostly populated by African Americans, who hustle each other for drug money, by playing chess. It's such an odd thing to think about, that most people feel it must be true. Who would imagine that winos and drug addicts would spend the kind of time to play chess, seen as a brainy sport.

Vinnie, as played by Laurence Fishburne, is seen as the embodiment of the street hustler, someone who sees that Josh has talent, and knows that Josh will eventually be better than all the guys out there. He nurtures Josh's talent in his own way, telling Josh to play aggressively, to play the equivalent of street ball in chess, and while Josh never brings himself to talk trash, like Vinnie, playing chess here is considered Josh's happiest moments.

As Pandolfini trains Josh, he wants him to avoid that crowd, because he feels it teaches him poor skills in chess. He notes that they play tactics, not position, which, if you're familiar with chess, are the two schools of thought in chess (one has to be versed in both, to be fair). This means he's told to abandon one chess father for another.

Since Pandolfini is the chess expert, he becomes something of the heavy, trying to get Josh to be all he can be, but his own dad also pressures him. Fred knows his son can beat nearly everyone, and yet questions Josh when Josh throws a game so he won't have to face the evil kid.

Ah, the evil kid. This is where the film takes some license again. The evil kid is the chess prodigy who's been trained to think only about chess, and nothing else. Josh is the well-rounded kid. He plays baseball. He goes fishing. There's more to his life than chess. Evil kid only plays chess. He has a strict mentor, and is shown to relish his ability to beat adults. And he manages to do this while uttering maybe three lines in the whole film. He mostly glares.

As I was watching the film, I wondered if it made sense to cast Max Pomeranc. Pomeranc was mostly picked not only because he looked innocent, but because he played chess. At first, I thought it was a bad decision. Pomeranc isn't a great child actor by any means. Still, they work his natural performance by having most of the actors underplay their parts.

It's an interesting choice for another reason. Child actors are often asked to do things that adult actors do. Some of the best child actors are unbelievably amazing, such as the incredible Haley Joel Osment. Max Pomeranc struggles with some of the acting he does. For example, when his dad is wondering why his son has tanked the game, he talks to Josh out in the rain. Max is trying to shiver naturally, and yet, it comes out unnatural, and that nearly speaks to the kind of awkwardness of a child trying to be an adult.

However, his innocence plays an important role in the film, because one key point is to show that he's a kid, a kid with tremendous talent for chess, but a kid nevertheless.

It's too bad that the film chose chess, even as it brings to light a game that is hardly ever shown in film. There are kids that are fanatics about basketball. They dream about being the next Jordan or Lebron James. They spend hours practicing their crossover dribbles. They are poor students.

Do their parents ever think "these kids spend far too much time on basketball, they need to have quality time doing something else, or they will be dysfunctional"? Somehow, anything that involves the brain is seen as abnormal, that kids need something athletic to have fun. Those that are athletic, on the other hand, often lack the kind of mental prowess to have them, say, play chess for fun, or do things that are more academically minded, something that might actually serve them in the long run.

Searcing fo Bobby Fischer tries to balance the good and bad in everyone. Pandolfini tries to be a good teacher. While he's portrayed as the strict dad that isn't there, eventually, he is there for Josh's big moment, realizing that Josh is a kid, after all. Fred realizes that maybe he's pushed expectations too much on Josh, expectations that Josh is starting to ingrain in himself, to keep his dad happy (these are the scenes that work least well for Max). He gives Josh an opportunity to get away from chess for a while, to not worry if he doesn't beat evil kid.

Vinnie is also there for Josh, showing that Josh still cares about the people who first kindled his interest in chess.

When you realize just how challenging a story this is, how difficult it is to have antagonists that aren't purely evil (except evil kid), you can forgive some of the excesses (the sympathetic lighting, the rain pouring down, the scene early on when a guy wants to give a baseball back for a chess piece that Josh has found, symbolizing Josh's decision for chess, the blantant underlining that Josh is tossing all his matches against his dad, because he doesn't want to beat his dad, the symbolic removal of the telephone books from the chair when he plays his dad for real, then races up to talk to his friend in between moves, the fire brigade of kids who relay what's happening in a key game with Josh, as the parents are locked away in a waiting room, so they won't pressure the kids).

All of this dramatization works because it defies conventions all around. The more I think about what the film is trying to do, the more amazed I am about how it manages to accomplish it all, and that's why I'll accept evil kid, even as the film needs a dramatic conclusion to show that Josh has learned lessons.

So you may wonder what's happened to Josh Waitzkin. When the film came out, he was still playing chess, in his late teens. It was 1993. The web existed, but it was rudimentary. The first browsers were perhaps being developed. Personal websites were extremely rare.

These days, Josh has his own website. Although he is still interested in chess, Josh turned his interests in 1998, to martial arts, in particular, Tai Chi, which is a form of meditative martial arts. Apparently, there is a competitive form of tai chi, and Josh, perhaps being obsessive compulsive, has done quite well, winning competitions in China.

There's probably going to be room for another film or documentary that details how this kid, pegged as the next Bobby Fisher (though the film is clear to show that he has decided, unlike evil kid, not to pursue chess as doggedly as he would need to to be the best in the world), has transformed himself.

You can go to his gallery, where pictures suggest he's hot and sultry while meditating over chess pieces and martial arts. If he was 18 at the time the film was completed in 1993, he must be about 31 or so, now.

This is the power of the web. Before it, I would have to work really hard to find out what happened to Josh. And Josh would have had little reason to put his life for view. The web makes that all quite easy now.

I'll give the film an A-. There are still a few too many dramatic liberties it takes that probably enhance the fun of the film, but maybe could have been toned down. You'll notice that indie directors often try to buck the trend of keeping audience expectations happy, and thus, alienate a few folks who want traditionally happy endings.