Director: Steven Zaillian
Writers: Fred Waitzkin, Steven Zaillian
Photography: Conrad L. Hall
Music: James Horner
Editor: Wayne Wahrman
Cast: Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Max Pomeranc, Ben Kingsley, Lawrence Fishburne, Robert Stephens, David Paymer, William H. Macy, Laura Linney, Dan Hedaya, Michael Nirenberg
Searching for Bobby Fischer is a feel-good sports movie about chess. So you know, it doesn’t have much to do with the eccentric chess genius Bobby Fischer (who died in 2008), except that the real-life chess prodigy the movie is about, Joshua Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc), idolizes, in whispered voiceover, Fischer and all his mystique. For his part, the typically rancorous Fischer thought the movie violated his privacy by using his name without his permission and he reportedly called it “a monumental swindle.” Yeah, OK. If feeling good is what you’re looking for, you can do worse. The main problem here is the specific subject at hand. It’s possible to do chess as a sports movie—the TV miniseries The Queen’s Gambit made a pretty good job of it a few years ago—but it’s not easy. Searching for Bobby Fischer abruptly gets very “chessy” in places, with fast shots of the board and obscure chatter and jargon about openings and “bringing out the queen” and such.
But I, for one, can’t just glean the situation from the position of pieces on the board, especially when they come at us so fast. Chess is complicated and hard to dramatize visually. Making movies about it is a bit like making movies about computer hacking activities. There’s only so much you can do with someone sitting at a keyboard in a darkened room and looking up to say, “We’re in.” Fred Waitzkin, Josh’s father and a New York journalist published in the New York Times, New York magazine, and Esquire, shows his seasoning (or maybe that’s cowriter Steven Zaillian?) by injecting a fair amount of sideline nostalgic baseball lore into the story, knowing that’s easier for most of us to grasp. Ken Burns’s Baseball would come out the following year, but this movie is already onboard with the idea of New York as the capital of baseball (and everything).
Searching for Bobby Fischer is a feel-good sports movie about chess. So you know, it doesn’t have much to do with the eccentric chess genius Bobby Fischer (who died in 2008), except that the real-life chess prodigy the movie is about, Joshua Waitzkin (Max Pomeranc), idolizes, in whispered voiceover, Fischer and all his mystique. For his part, the typically rancorous Fischer thought the movie violated his privacy by using his name without his permission and he reportedly called it “a monumental swindle.” Yeah, OK. If feeling good is what you’re looking for, you can do worse. The main problem here is the specific subject at hand. It’s possible to do chess as a sports movie—the TV miniseries The Queen’s Gambit made a pretty good job of it a few years ago—but it’s not easy. Searching for Bobby Fischer abruptly gets very “chessy” in places, with fast shots of the board and obscure chatter and jargon about openings and “bringing out the queen” and such.
But I, for one, can’t just glean the situation from the position of pieces on the board, especially when they come at us so fast. Chess is complicated and hard to dramatize visually. Making movies about it is a bit like making movies about computer hacking activities. There’s only so much you can do with someone sitting at a keyboard in a darkened room and looking up to say, “We’re in.” Fred Waitzkin, Josh’s father and a New York journalist published in the New York Times, New York magazine, and Esquire, shows his seasoning (or maybe that’s cowriter Steven Zaillian?) by injecting a fair amount of sideline nostalgic baseball lore into the story, knowing that’s easier for most of us to grasp. Ken Burns’s Baseball would come out the following year, but this movie is already onboard with the idea of New York as the capital of baseball (and everything).
Director and cowriter Steven Zaillian made his career more as a screenwriter, e.g., Schindler’s List and The Irishman. He got a few opportunities to direct, starting with Searching for Bobby Fischer and including A Civil Action in 1998 and the 2006 All the King’s Men remake. I see that Searching for Bobby Fischer got an Oscar nomination for Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography but I’m only being honest when I say I didn’t notice anything special about it before I knew that. I have some random personal connections to Searching for Bobby Fischer because it was one of the movies I dragged my Dad into on one of his visits. It turned out to be a movie-themed visit as we also saw Lorenzo’s Oil and A River Runs Through It and enjoyed all of them and our time together. It was a good visit. Aside from that, I don’t know that Searching for Bobby Fischer has aged so well.
The casting includes lots of ‘90s-era hey-that-guys, starting with the designated star of the show Joe Montegna as Josh’s father Fred, who wrote the memoir of the same name that the picture is based on. Montegna brings his usual affable hangdog shtick to the story, neither detracting nor particularly adding anything. In the movie, Fred recognizes Josh’s ability only after his wife and the wholesome speed-chess gang down at Washington Square. Joan Allen is the wife and mother, Bonnie. I have a theory that Joan Allen’s perennially comforting presence almost automatically makes everything she appears in a feel-good movie, but maybe that was just in the ‘90s (Nixon, The Ice Storm, Face/Off, Pleasantville).
Ben Kingsley is another high point of the casting, as he usually is. He plays a chess teacher with the unlikely name of Bruce who is thrilled to take on the gifted Josh, partly to make up for his own failings as a teacher and chess player. Of course he has a rival, played with lots of gusto by Robert Stephens, who has his own reasonably gifted protégé. This young fellow, Jonathan Poe (Michael Nirenberg), who looks like a Hitler Youth, will somehow strike terror into Josh, which he must overcome, and does.
My favorite performance in memory was Lawrence Fishburne as Vinnie (another unlikely name here), the Washington Square speed-chess big-talking guru. He’s even on hand trash-talking near the end for Josh’s climactic tournament, one of the biggest yet in his early career, certainly in terms of overcoming his fear of a rival player. Fishburne didn’t seem quite as lively and charismatic in a more recent viewing, in a movie that didn’t seem quite as lively and charismatic either. Oh it’s so syrupy sweet with all these chess-derived life lessons. I reflexively, when prompted, gave it a 6 of 10 on IMDb, and then noticed it had an aggregate 7.4 from 43,000 viewers there. Thus, caveats: 43,000 viewers feeling good can’t be wrong. Maybe I saw it in the right frame of mind the first time.
The casting includes lots of ‘90s-era hey-that-guys, starting with the designated star of the show Joe Montegna as Josh’s father Fred, who wrote the memoir of the same name that the picture is based on. Montegna brings his usual affable hangdog shtick to the story, neither detracting nor particularly adding anything. In the movie, Fred recognizes Josh’s ability only after his wife and the wholesome speed-chess gang down at Washington Square. Joan Allen is the wife and mother, Bonnie. I have a theory that Joan Allen’s perennially comforting presence almost automatically makes everything she appears in a feel-good movie, but maybe that was just in the ‘90s (Nixon, The Ice Storm, Face/Off, Pleasantville).
Ben Kingsley is another high point of the casting, as he usually is. He plays a chess teacher with the unlikely name of Bruce who is thrilled to take on the gifted Josh, partly to make up for his own failings as a teacher and chess player. Of course he has a rival, played with lots of gusto by Robert Stephens, who has his own reasonably gifted protégé. This young fellow, Jonathan Poe (Michael Nirenberg), who looks like a Hitler Youth, will somehow strike terror into Josh, which he must overcome, and does.
My favorite performance in memory was Lawrence Fishburne as Vinnie (another unlikely name here), the Washington Square speed-chess big-talking guru. He’s even on hand trash-talking near the end for Josh’s climactic tournament, one of the biggest yet in his early career, certainly in terms of overcoming his fear of a rival player. Fishburne didn’t seem quite as lively and charismatic in a more recent viewing, in a movie that didn’t seem quite as lively and charismatic either. Oh it’s so syrupy sweet with all these chess-derived life lessons. I reflexively, when prompted, gave it a 6 of 10 on IMDb, and then noticed it had an aggregate 7.4 from 43,000 viewers there. Thus, caveats: 43,000 viewers feeling good can’t be wrong. Maybe I saw it in the right frame of mind the first time.
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