Searching for Bobby Fischer, and a few more movies

Searching for Bobby Fischer, and a few more movies

THE NEVERENDING
FILM FESTIVAL
#163 [archive]

Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
a/k/a Innocent Moves

This is a sports movie, with all the familiar touchstones of the genre — the gifted player, the wise coach, the concerned dad, the crisis of confidence, the big game. Instead of baseball or boxing, though, it’s about a child chess prodigy.

At seven years of age, Josh Waitzkin has the talent, but it needs refining, so he’s taught first by chess-wiseacre Larry Fishburne, then by an extremely up-tight-ass Ben Kingsley. The latter’s character says he knows all of chess great Bobby Fischer’s moves, and tells the boy, “You have to have contempt for your opponents. You have to hate them.”

The kid, though, doesn’t want to hate anybody. He just wants to play chess, and also be a kid.

How do you make a movie about chess, a game where two people stare at a board? They just sit there, don’t even roll dice, so unlike a baseball or boxing movie, there’s no action to it.

The solution seems slightly ridiculous — never been to a big-time chess tournament, so maybe it really is as loud, fast-moving, athletic, and almost violent as the chess played in this movie. I’d be surprised, though.

Over the course of almost two hours, we get lots of perfectly-staged “chess action shots,” with players aggressively slamming pieces on the board, and then slapping the chess-clock with such force that you know a few of the movie’s hundreds of chess-clocks must’ve been shattered.

That’s not a criticism, though. It’s a compliment — it makes a slow, thoughtful, almost entirely internal game into a fast-paced, entertaining movie. At one point, the kids play standing up and angry, and you’ll wonder if they’re gonna deck each other. (They don’t.)

The movie is intelligent, full of believable characters, and it dangles serious questions like: What’s really important in a kid’s life? Does sportsmanship count for anything? Is winning all that matters? And what should decent parents do with a prodigy kid, anyway? It comes up with the right answers, too.

No chess expertise is needed on your part. You’d have to freeze the frame to understand the piece positions in any of the games, and scant attention is paid to chess strategy, beyond occasional quips between Fishburne and Kingsley over whether the kid tends to bring his queen out too early (which is elementary, chesswise).

And again, that’s the way to make a chess flick. Only a geek among geeks wants to see a chess movie with discussions about moves and mistakes and what’s the right response if your opponent plays the Caro–Kann Defense. This ain’t that. It’s a movie about people, not pawns and bishops and rooks.

Joe Mantegna and Joan Allen play the kid’s parents (Allen steals every scene she’s in), with quick bits from Dan Hedaya, Laura Linney, William H. Macy, David Paymer, and a few more stars before they were famous.

Max Pomeranc, the child actor playing the kid, is angelically cute, almost too cute, and comes complete with a slight but darling lisp. He’s so frickin’ perfect, smart, well-behaved, and darn it, just nice, he ought to get on my nerves, but remarkably, he’s never even nerve-adjacent.

His key rival is even more impressive. He’s a personality-deprived, humorless horror of pre-adolescence, with a mean demeanor reminiscent of Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in Rocky IV — you know, “If he dies, he dies.”

Evil chess boy was played by someone named Michael Nirenberg, who lived only 13 years before dying of cancer, the internet says, though there’s some skepticism about that.

Searching for Bobby Fischer is the first film directed by Steven Zaillian, and it’s very nearly perfect. He also wrote the script, and he’s written other several terrific flicks — A Civil Action, Awakenings, The Falcon and the Snowman, and more.

The music is by James Horner, with the soaring triumphant symphonics of a good stand-up-and-cheer flick. It’s non-fiction, based on a book written by the real Josh Waitzkin’s father, a sportswriter who barely knew the rules of chess until he played against his son and got his king handed to him.

“The game’s not over yet, Josh.”

“Yeth, it is.”

Verdict: BIG YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

The Arnelo Affair (1947)

This is film noir, written and directed by Arch Oboler, one of my favorite minor-league moviemakers. He was most successful in radio, and never achieved big-time success in the movies, but he made several small movies with big ideas, including The Bubble, and including this.

It’s about a married woman who’s drawn into an affair with an unsavory sort, “the man with the four-alarm eyes,” as a friend calls him. He owns a nightclub, has a hand in murder, and he’s trying to frame or blackmail his mistress.

Based on a radio play by Oboler, it’s odd, intriguing, and good but never great, and, sorry Arch, but it’s lacking in direction. It features a no-star cast, but has the delightful Eve Arden and cute-kid Dean Stockwell in supporting roles.

At one point, the camera zooms in on a newspaper story about a murder, and the text is highlighted to make sure you read it: “The police assert that the only clew is a woman’s compact, bearing the initial ‘A’…”

What the—? I had to pause and Google, but find no evidence that ‘clue’, meaning evidence, has ever been correctly spelled ‘clew’. In the same fake clipping on-screen, the word clue is also spelled correctly, which is evidence that it’s simply a 75-year-old typo in a movie that’s adequate but uninspired.

Verdict: YES.

♦ ♦ ♦

Invisible City (2009)

This is a watchable but holy-crap sad documentary set in Regent Park, Toronto’s oldest public housing complex, which (at the time this film was made) was undergoing a “revitalization” project that would involve tearing down thousands of people’s homes.

It mostly focuses on a couple of black kids, on their way to being hoodlums. They talk to the camera, and we get to know them, and see that between prejudice, poverty, and the dilapidated housing project they’ve called home, they’ve never had a chance, and they probably never will.

Verdict: YES, but also, jeez.

♦ ♦ ♦

Coming attractions:

Animal House (1978)

At the Circus (1939)

Bamboozled (2000)

Barbarians at the Gate (1993)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Brain Donors (1992)

Curse of the Black Widow (1977)

Dark Days (2000)

Delicatessen (1991)

Edge of Fury (1978)

Elysium (2013)

The Flipside of Dominick Hide (1980)

Ghosts with Shit Jobs (2012)

The Honeymoon Killers (1969)

The Invisible Man (1933)

Labyrint (1963)

My Life in Monsters (2015)

Our House (2006)

The Thing from Another World (1951)

Where the Wild Things Are (2009)

7/16/2023

There are so many good movies out there — old movies, odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten movies, or do-it-yourself movies made just for the joy of making them — that if you only watch whatever’s on Netflix or playing at the twenty-plex, you’re missing out.

To get beyond the ordinary, I recommend:
Alter
Cineverse
Criterion
CultCinema Classics
DocsVille
Dust
Fandor
Films for Action
Hoopla
IHaveNoTV
IndieFlix
Internet Archive
Kanopy
KinoCult
Kino Lorber
Korean Classic Film
Christopher R Mihm
Mosfilm
Mubi
National Film Board of Canada
New Yorker Screening Room
Damon Packard
Mark Pirro
PizzaFlix
PopcornFlix
Public Domain Movies
RareFilmm
Scarecrow Video
Shudder
ThoughtMaybe
Timeless Classic Movies
VoleFlix
WatchDocumentaries
or your local library. Some people even access films through shady methods, though of course, that would be wrong.

— — —

Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Reviews are spoiler-free, or at least spoiler-warned. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the
popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.

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31 responses to “Searching for Bobby Fischer, and a few more movies”

johnthebasket

07/16/2023

I've been to two big-time chess tournaments, but no scholastic ones. That's what's portrayed here: scholastic chess. From my perspective, you got everything right in the review and wrote it much better and more succinctly than I could have (hey, you do this for a living). If it's almost a great movie, that was an entirely great review.

Entirely separate from the movie and the review is the question of how to dramatize chess (TV & movies). The reason that Searching . . . was a better experience than The Queen's Gambit is that the former is from a non-fiction book by one of the characters in the middle of the action. Like any good reviewer, you didn't spoil the ending of the film, but Josh didn't go on to an adult life as a competitive chess player, which is the point of the movie from the opening scene. In fiction, he would be playing Garry Kasparov or some other Russian for the World Chess Championship.

Bobby Fischer emerged from the New York Chess Club and defeated he world, then descended into madness. Josh Waitzkin had similar origins, but became a functional adult. For a couple of decades, American chess geeks were searching for the next Bobby Fischer. They found a new generation of very good players, but, thankfully, none of them was the next "young Fischer".

Thanks for the insightful review.

John

Reply
1. Sam I Am
  
  07/17/2023
  
  I was in some school chess tournaments when I was in school, and it was like a library, the rule was no unnecessary noises and no talking except 'check' and 'jadoube'.
  
  Reply
2. Doug Holland
  
  07/17/2023
  
  Thanks Mr Basket, for kind words. I thought the review was long and too fragmented, but the movie was great.
  
  I may have said "almost great" in conversation a while back, but that was me being stubborn. I always want the movie some schlub makes in his back yard to be great, but kinda hold a grudge against big budget Hollywood stuff that has all the money and skill advantages. But SEARCHING, man, I not only watched then and again now, I watched it two more agains in the last few weeks, and it's splendid, and splendidly assembled, despite all the money and talent, so — not almost, genuine great.
  
  At the big-time chess tournaments, did they play slam chess?
  
  Pretty sure I'll never find time for THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT.
  
  Reply
3. johnthebasket
  
  07/17/2023
  
  Sorry, I don't know what "slam chess" is. If you mean, "do they play for blood", at the two US Championships I attended people won and lost like ladies and gentlemen. If that's not what you mean, feel to clarify.
  
  John
  
  Reply
4. Doug Holland
  
  07/17/2023
  
  I meant, like in SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER, moving a piece and then slamming it onto the board hard enough to echo off the walls, and smashing the chess-clock like it had said something unsavory about yo momma.
  
  Reply
5. johnthebasket
  
  07/17/2023
  
  No. Of course they play for blood, but at the end of the game there is a handshake and, in general, kind words. These folks all know what it takes to get there. Once the players leave the roped off area, they are usually willing to converse with the fans and even sign autographs. Very few assholes at the US Championships I attended.
  
  jtb
  
  Reply
6. Doug Holland
  
  07/17/2023
  
  Do they slam the pieces around, deck the clock, or are the players hush-hush about such noises?
  
  Reply
Jordan

07/17/2023

Nice review of Searching for Bobby Fisher. Before even reading your review, the very first thing I remembered abou the movie was that super-serious boy in the white shirt. He was very unsettling to me!

I am sorry to hear that he's dead or isn't.

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  07/17/2023
  
  His life or death has gotten all the thought and time it'll get from me. If he dies, he dies. But I prefer thinking that Mr Nirenberg is alive, and simply wanted to quit show biz with a *very* final "bite me."
  
  Reply
2. johnthebasket
  
  07/18/2023
  
  Mr Nirenberg sounds like a good candidate for a demonstration a la Schrödinger of Quantum superposition. He seems to be very much alive and very much dead, which doesn't violate the rules of quantum mechanics until you open the box and the collapse the state vector. I'm not advocating anything in particular. I'm perfectly happy leaving him in the box.
  
  jtb
  
  Reply
3. johnthebasket
  
  07/18/2023
  
  Oh, man, I just had a long comment explaining the layout and dynamic of the 2000-2002 US Chess Championship in Seattle and my comment just went poof. My fault, not the Googs. I managed to fuck myself in the ass. I just don't have the heart to try to reconstruct it.
  
  John
  
  Reply
4. Doug Holland
  
  07/18/2023
  
  It's too late for advice, sorry, but having been felled by Schrödinger comment box too many times myself, my habit now is to create comments in my word processor, and paste 'em here.
  
  Reply
sprunki

01/09/2025

“Searching for Bobby Fischer” is a film worth watching. It not only tells a story about a chess genius, but also conveys profound themes about growth, family and self-discovery through this story. The film’s emotional sincerity and excellent performance by the actors make it a work that can touch people’s hearts.

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  01/09/2025
  
  Succinct and spot on, thanks.
  
  Thinking about SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER again makes me suddenly remember LITTLE MAN TATE, which I liked and which, from my very distant memory of it, touched on similar themes. Goes on the re-watch list.
  
  Reply
johnthebasket

01/10/2025

Speaking of Bobby Fischer, the World Blitz concluded recently with Magnus and Nepo agreeing to a draw, much to the organizers’ displeasure; Magnus beats his ?rival? Hans Niemann and moves his king after the last game; and Magnus puts on a bit of a fashion show at the World Rapid. AND, in world championship news, India announces that THEY actually invented fireworks.

I have no idea whether this is News or Sports.

John

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  01/10/2025
  
  I don’t know the fireworks story. Care to share?
  
  The shared chess championship is excellent, in my opinion, and I don’t care about the organizers’ displeasure. And I loved Magnus’s wardrobe malfunction. Kinda love Magnus. If chess is sport, he might be my favorite current athlete.
  
  Reply
johnthebasket

01/10/2025

An 18-year old from India recently beat a slightly older player from China for the world chess championship. All of India is celebrating, way out of proportion, and claiming superiority over China. I exaggerated for emphasis.

jtb

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  01/10/2025
  
  My honest assessment is that I’d probably rather go to a Chinese buffet than an Indian buffet, but neither cuisine is superior. It’s just that the Chinese buffets are usually cheaper.
  
  Reply
johnthebasket

01/10/2025

Also, Magnus and Nepo have been competing since they were adolescents. Twenty years at least. They respect each other’s game — a draw was a good outcome for both.

jtb

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  01/10/2025
  
  Didn’t know that. Kinda like the kids in SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER.
  
  Reply
  1. johnthebasket
    
    01/10/2025
    
    World chess is serious business. Magnus’ father quit his job when Magnus showed chess promise by age 10. His mom supported the family and the guys’ travel all over Europe. Magnus wasn’t really self-supporting until he won his first World Championship. This is life-changing stuff for the whole family. Prodigies rarely die happy. I hope Magnus makes it — but I never pray.
    
    jtb
    
    Reply
    1. Doug Holland
      
      01/11/2025
      
      MC’s father quit his job to accompany the kid on tour, to be his manager? The world of chess success is foreign to me, but as alluded and as I understand it, there’s no real money in the game until you’ve become Famous Chess Player, so Mom’s job must’ve been well-paid, to support the family plus all the chess gallivanting.
      
      So young Magnus had that advantage over the competition and over the rest of us. And I ain’t mad at him for it, not at all. Just something I notice more and more, that if you peel back the story of someone successful, you’ll find advantages most of us never had.
      
      There may occasionally be a “self-made success,” but they’re certainly rare.
      
      Reply
      1. johnthebasket
        
        01/11/2025
        
        If you’re going to be successful at chess, you have to start young, and what you have to do will disrupt your family no matter how you go about it. As parents, you don’t want to send your 10-year-old off with strangers, but there are so many Thursday through Sunday night tournaments that it’s pretty hard not to. Magnus’ parents were middle class by Norwegian standards, and made a family decision to let Magnus pursue chess for a few years and see how he did. They gave up a lot, like many parents do, to give their child an opportunity to succeed. I suppose in most cases is doesn’t work out well: in the Carlsen case it did.
        
        Magnus now makes good dough, something professional chess players didn’t do when he started before the information revolution, so he’s paying his parents back with a slightly early retirement and some small luxuries. I doubt that either parent made the dough your Dad did. If Magnus were still struggling after a few years, his dad would have just gone back to work. This is a success story. There are many more failure stories.
        
        John
        
        Reply
        
        Doug Holland
        
        01/12/2025
        
        Is it straight-up chess money, or does Mangus also endorse chess sets and leisure suits and such? Just curious, but as usual, not curious enough to Google it.
        
        Sharp fencing, to compare it to my dad’s income. Makes me pause and ponder, like any good parry and thrust should.
        
        My pop must’ve been well paid for his sciency job at Boeing. It was enough to buy a large house and two cars and raise six kids. No idea what that would cost these days — $250,000 p/year? Truly, I had advantages too.
        
        Reply
        
        johnthebasket
        
        01/12/2025
        
        Sure, like a leader in any field, Magnus gets some appearance money and writes chess books. I’ve never seen him endorse any non-chess items like leisure suits, but he rarely dresses up: usually dresses down, which is how he recently got in trouble. I suppose there are other income-producing activities in the Information Economy for a former world champion, but I don’t know what they are. He watches his reputation pretty closely but I don’t think he has a bunch of attorneys like star futball players. Word is that he made sure to pay back his parents for all their time and some of their lost wages, but I don’t know any details about that. For whatever celebrity he possesses, he seems like a pretty normal guy.
        
        John
        
        Reply
        
        Doug Holland
        
        01/12/2025
        
        Oh cripes, I hope he’s not normal. Normal sucks. Never settle for normal.
        
        Football players seem to have a high percentage of assholery. Chess players, not so much.
        
        Reply
        
        johnthebasket
        
        01/12/2025
        
        Josh Waitzkin walked away from competitive chess in his late teens or early 20s. All the time his parents had invested in helping him advance in chess . . . well, it wasn’t wasted; they got some quality time with their kid, but he just didn’t have that extra crazy spark that creates world top-ten players.
        
        John
        
        Reply
        
        Doug Holland
        
        01/12/2025
        
        Does anyone know what Joshua Waitzkin does these days? Wikipedia doesn’t really say. Tai chi and wrote a couple of books and “spokesperson for the Chessmaster video game series…”
        
        Reply
johnthebasket

01/14/2025

Josh Waitzkin is 48, and making a living of sorts coaching various forms of martial arts. He is a chess IM (International Master, second only to Grand Master) which is awarded for life. He is married and, by all accounts, happy with his decision to walk away from chess.

The movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” is only loosely related to the book his father Fred wrote about his prodigy son. They share a title.

John

Reply
1. Doug Holland
  
  01/14/2025
  
  A happy ending, then — rare in life.
  
  Reply
  1. johnthebasket
    
    01/14/2025
    
    And a movie made from the title of a book instead of the storyline — not so rare.
    
    jtb
    
    Reply

Searching for Bobby Fischer, and a few more movies

31 responses to “Searching for Bobby Fischer, and a few more movies”

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