Liz Garbus: Bobby Fischer against the World

Archive material, interviews and commentaries, the film has a classical build up of a story about the chess genius, American Bobby Fischer (1943-2008), whose story is one of those written out of a reality that surpasses any Hollywood fiction script. Already a grandmaster as a teenager, he grew up to play the legendary match in Iceland in 1972 against Boris Spassky, a match between sportsmen but also a match with political significance in the middle of the cold war. He became the legendary world champion, we all remember.

But something was wrong with Bobby Fischer, and this is what the film focuses on. You sense it in the brilliantly told story, where again and again you see the haunted face of the kid and the young Fischer, whose eyes do not focus and who speaks unwillingly about his childhood. His behaviour during the Iceland match was unpredictable, not to talk about his play, a man of surprises and a man who turned mad in his older years, with totally anti-american and anti-semitic comments to everything around him. He ended up in Iceland again, after having travelled the world as a nomad, being arrested in Japan, threatened to be deported to the US, granted citizenship in Iceland where he stayed until his death having verbal fights with everyone.

Who was he, Bobby Fischer, the young kid with the worried eyes and the special skills, a man who often was searching for peace and quietness, but who did not get that in his fight with inner deamons?

Shown at Free Thought documentary programme at Moscow International Film festival 2011. For our Danish readers: The film premieres at Vester VovVov, Copenhagen, August 25.

USA, 2011, 93 mins.

http://bobbyfischermovie.co.uk/

Still: filmmakers pic.