Sep 22, 2015 04:00 PM
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(Updated Sep 22, 2015 07:22 PM)
I had made up my mind to watch this movie the day I set my eyes on the lines of a promotional poster of the film that was on display when I had been to Cinepolis to watch Uppi 2, a Kannada movie. The lines on the poster read: On the board, he fought the Cold War. In his mind, he fought his madness.
Apart from those lines on the poster, I loved the chess board with a few pieces randomly skewed on it and the depiction of calculations of chess moves that were shown right on top of Tobey Maguire's(the guy who plays Bobby Fischer) head. After watching Everest(another flick that I don't feel like reviewing here), given the free time I had today, I decided to watch Pawn Sacrifice.
It was quite surprising to note that there were just a few(nerdy) people in the cinema hall watching this movie along with me. The movie particularly deals with the ascent of Fischer's sporting career from a chess-obsessed young kid to his victory against the popular(at that time) Boris Spassky(I love the feel of joy I experience while pronouncing his surname) in the World Chess Championship.
I don't want to dwell too much on the synopsis of the flick as it is all over the place on the Internet. However, I want to highlight and write a few things about the movie that I really enjoyed watching and fell in love with on a certain level. It's a must say that the performances by Tobey Maguire as Bobby Fischer and Liev Schreiber as Boris Spassky are endearing to watch. They play their roles like they are literally living the lives of those they portray on screen. The movie hits its high emotional points on a few occasions that shall thrill the human and the sportsman in you.
This particular scene stood out for me: Fischer's mother seems quite irritated with his obsession for chess, and she arranges a match between him and an expert chess player of that time in the USA. She does so with an intention in her mind of seeing her kid lose the match. She feels if Fischer loses the match, he will come back to his normal life. The expert is stunned at the way the young kid is moving the pieces on the board, but he manages to win against Fischer nevertheless. Fischer is overwhelmed and furious. Instead of giving up(as his mother excepted), he emotionally, with tears rolling down his cheeks, asks the expert to play another match.
Fischer is so fascinated and obsessed with the sport that he spends 18 hours a day studying it. He loses interest in everything else in life and literally breathes and lives chess. He goes on to become a player to reckon in America. During the Cold War, Russia, with its incredible chess players and equating chess with intellectual superiority, is ready to take on this emerging player from America. When America just sees Fischer as a weapon to put an end to the mounting Russian ego, they realize that Fischer is not just a genius who can bring laurels to his country but also eccentric and arrogant. He makes unrealistic demands and takes many around him on a trip. The rest of the movie deals with what eventually happens in Fischer's life until he gets crowned as a World Chess Champion.
The movie has its flaws. I firmly believe biopics should not just narrate events that have happened and is in the public domain already. It should deal more with the person, the human being, her/his relationships with others, and the quirks that make a person what s/he is. It should try portraying, which the movie fails to do, why a legend became what he became, what motivated him, what kept him going, what were his inner struggles and strengths, why was s/he the way s/he was, etc. The movie deals with too many frames where the act of playing chess takes over, and a person in the audience who has neither played chess nor has enjoyed or followed the sport will find those scenes technical and a little boring. Also, way too much information about Fischer passes on the screen as a textual information and not as a visual portrayal.
In spite of its flaws, I felt the movie was worth a watch. It had a legendary story to narrate, but the screenplay could have been way, way better. Nevertheless, if you're a professional chess player, or ever wanted to be one(like me), you will sit through and applaud the story of the greatest chess player who ever played the sport.
