Pawn Sacrifice

The Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky world chess championship in the summer of 1972 was one of the most followed sports dramas of the Cold War era.   The film Pawn Sacrifice by director Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai) recounts this epic battle that pitted the best of the Soviet system against an enigmatic and mercurial young prodigy from Brooklyn.  Taking on the enormously difficult task of dramatizing the best of 24 game series and profiling the tempestuous and eccentric Fischer, Zwick largely succeeds in making a film that is at one time a Cold War drama, a character study and a time piece.  Tobey Maguire clearly spent a great deal of time studying Fischer, and nailed his mannerisms, gait, and irascibility and Liev Schreiber portrays the confident, more dashing Boris Spassky with real panache.

Bobby Fischer was one of the most interesting figures in American popular culture of the 1970’s.  Raised by a single mom (who was under investigation by the F.B.I. for her subversive activities), Fischer turned to chess at an early age (likely in part as a distraction from his broken home) and learned to play on his own and through hanging around his local chess club in Brooklyn.

Chess in the Soviet Union is its national pastime and Boris Spassky was a product of the Soviet chess system, which identified, culled and trained chess players, and consequently, the Russians dominated the chess world for decades.  The matchup was a classic battle between an American maverick and a representative of the collectivist system.  The Soviets played chess as a team sport and Fischer accused the Soviets of colluding at tournaments.

Fischer’s obsession with the game propelled him to become the youngest grandmaster at age 15 and the youngest U.S. Chess Champion at age 20, propelling him into the national media spotlight in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Seemingly overnight, the socially awkward Fischer became a national sensation.  His stardom spawned a boom in chess, as chess clubs flourished across the country and chess sets flew off the shelves.

The East and West could not fight a hot war without destroying themselves, so they fought proxy wars in other countries, competed for dominance in space, and in 1972, their representatives battled in Reykjavik on a chess board.  Pawn Sacrifice captures this high drama and the vaulting of an unlikely temperamental nerd from Brooklyn to media star.  After losing the initial game, and forfeiting the second because of one of his recurring tantrums over playing conditions, Fischer went on to beat Spassky.  While there was no blood, bullets or guns on the screen, Zwick makes this confrontation every bit as riveting as his other war films- The Last Samurai and Glory.  Interestingly, a couple of months later, Team Canada beat the Soviet Team in the other source of Soviet pride –hockey--in a come from behind effort in their Summit Series. I can’t help but wonder if those two events were a foreshadowing of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Pawn Sacrifice ends as abruptly as Fischer’s stardom and spends only a few moments on the end game—Fischer’s disappearance from competitive chess and the entire national spotlight (and re-emergence in 1992 to take on Spassky in a rematch), his vagabond existence and his deteriorating mental health.   If you are interested in filling in the missing parts, read “Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How the Soviets Lost the Most Extraordinary Chess Match of All Time,” by David Edmonds and John Eidinow.

The puzzling, contradictory figure of Fischer is perhaps best captured by my two favorite quotes by Fischer.  His steely, cold competitiveness was revealed by Dick Cavett (Cavett himself suffered from bipolar disorder) when Cavett what gave him the most pleasure in chess, Fischer responded, “The moment when I break my opponent’s ego.”  Yet this same solitary and reclusive Bobby Fischer’s last words on his deathbed were, “Nothing is as healing as the human touch.” 

Fischer belongs in that pantheon of genius talents such as John Nash, Vincent van Gough, and Jack Kerouac that were simultaneously given a remarkable gift and a curse to a high degree and Pawn Sacrifice excellently portrays Fischer as a troubled front line soldier in the Cold War that defeated the Soviets on a bloodless battlefield.