European Premiere / Documentary – UK

Showing @ Filmhouse 1, Fri 17 June @ 17:40 & Filmhouse 2, Mon 20 June @ 19:55

Liz Garbus / USA / UK / Iceland / 2010 / 92 min / English

The Watergate scandal is surely one of the most significant and infamous events of 20th century America. But a news broadcast at the time didn’t see it that way – no, much more important and first in the bulletins was American chess player Bobby Fischer as he prepared to check mate his way to become the World Champion.

A documentary about chess sounds like one of the dullest ways to pass an hour and a half of your life, but it is in fact incredibly fascinating. Against the backdrop of Cold War politics, Bobby Fischer Against the World charts the rise and fall of the man who is considered to be the best chess player of all time, from his celebrated genius as a teenager to his self-destructive paranoia in the second half of his life. With an eloquent and well-constructed narrative, director Liz Garbus hooks us in early on and keeps alluding to approaching points of tension to keep the audience engaged and the pace snappy. The careful pulling together of archive footage and interviews with Fischer’s friends and acquaintances keeps the tone hip and exciting, with a funky soundtrack to banish any feelings of stuffiness.

The power of making a biographical documentary after someone’s dead is people aren’t afraid to say what they really think about the subject in question, and in no way is Fischer presented as a likable figure. Even before his downward spiral into what can only be described as a kind of insanity, he was selfish, demanding and egotistical. The way he tormented opponent and defending champion Boris Spassky in the lead-up to and during the 1972 World Chess Championships is abhorrent; disappearing for days on end, turning up late or not at all, complaining to every tiny noise within the competition hall. Embroiled with the Cold War politics of the two countries trying to outdo each other intellectually, the pressure on Fischer to beat the Soviet must have been huge – but surely no less on Spassky who behaved unbelievably accommodatingly given the circumstances.

According to the film, there are in the region of 10 with 45 zeroes tagged onto the end different possible moves in a chess game, meaning that an ability to think of every possible eventuality is a must for someone as masterful as Fischer. Quitting at the top of his game after he became the world champion, Fischer had nothing to channel his astounding genius into and the result was extreme paranoia, anti-Semitism and loathing of the USA, which he spoke endlessly and compulsively about. Some of the footage of his hate-filled ramblings is actually pretty disturbing such as his joy at 9/11, or his forceful and repetitive referral to a journalist’s father as “a typical Jewish snake” during a packed-out press conference. If there’s ever an example of fame gone horribly, grotesquely wrong, this is it – and it makes for great viewing.