As my grandfather would say, "everything in moderation."
Fischer was a Brooklyn whiz kid who rose to prominence on the 1950s chess scene. (Yeah, I don’t really know what the heck a “chess scene” is either, other than old creepy dudes hanging around Washington Square Park, but I’ll take history at its word.) In no time he is dubbed America’s greatest chess master and wants to face off against his Soviet counterpart Boris Spassky. The resultant matches were to chess what Ali/Frazier was to boxing. Unfortunately, Bobby Fischer Against The World is no When We Were Kings.
The film is no flop, but this is based solely on the subject matter being inherently fascinating. You’ve got the Cold War, monstrous egos, and a main character who never had a childhood destroying himself with his own brilliance.
After Fischer defeats Spassky (spoiler alert?) he goes completely bananas, disappears and pops up again after a spell ranting about the CIA and Zionism. He makes shocking pronouncements after 9/11 and flees to Iceland to live out his remaining years screaming about the evils of the Jewish people. (Fischer is, in fact, Jewish.)
How did this happen? The film posits that any gifted person's life so thoroughly devoted to just one thing is going to short circuit. All Fischer did was think about chess. He had no real friends, no fixed address. Just pieces on the board.
BFATW does a decent job of telling the man's biography, but completely fails in expressing just what Fischer means to chess lovers. I know the basic chess moves, but don't consider myself fluent in the game. The interview subjects remind us time and again that Fischer was an artist and a genius, but the film does a poor job in showing someone new to the story just how and why this is so.
Considering that this film is very straightforward (talking head, archive clip, repeat) the lack of visual flair or cinematic flourish ultimately leads to an informative, but boring picture.
