À la recherche de Bobby Fischer

Josh Waitzkin is a regular boy in NYC who quickly picks up the game of chess. He befriends chess hustler Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) who plays in Washington Square. Josh's parents (Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen) hire chess coach Bruce Pandolfini (Ben Kingsley) who tries to teach him regimented chess. It's a struggle for Josh's heart between his two mentors Vinnie and Bruce.

This is truly a wonderful movie. It is all heart. Max Pomeranc plays it with so much feeling with so few words. I love that he deliberately loses to his father at the start. He's a boy who is trying to grow up and many times, he shows that he's actually the adult in the relationships. Director Steven Zaillian makes so many great moves. And the great actors are all doing their parts. It's a really sweet movie.

***SPOILERS*** The movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" parallels the lives of Grand Chess Master Bobby Fischer with that of young seven year-old chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, Max Pomeranc. The movie does it by inserting newsreel footage of Bobby winning the World Chess Championship Tournament in Reykjavik Iceland back in 1972 against the Soviet Unions Boris Spassky. It then jumps back to when Bobby Fischer was a young boy, and man, in the 1950's and 1960's as his obsession with chess brought him the fame and glory that he sought. Yet at the same time denied him the life of a normal boy growing up in post WWII America that his night and day chess fixation cost him.

Josh has lots of promise in becoming a future Bobby Fischer; he has a computer-like mind and a natural ability to foresee moves by his opponents, even before they even know that they'll make them. One thing that Josh doesn't have is that drive and determination, as well as killer-instinct, that Bobby Fisher had and as far as I know still does in playing to win and pulverizing his opponents into the ground by doing it.

Josh likes all kinds of sports, besides chess, and his dad Fred Waitzkin, Joe Mantegna, is a sports writer who takes Josh along to the Yankee and New York Mets baseball games where the young boy really has as much of a good time watching the ball games as he has playing chess. Fred realizes what a whiz his young son Josh is in the game of chess and wants to have him study the finer points of the game by hiring former national chess champion Bruce Pandolfini, Ben Kingsley, to tutor him and Bruce right away realizes that Josh has the makings of another Bobby Fischer. What does bother Bruce about Josh is his playing with the local chess hustlers like Winnie, Laurence Fishburn, in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Which, in Bruce's opinion, is far to fast and doesn't give young Josh time to develop his all around concentration and understanding of the game of chess.

During the course of the movie Josh is driven relentlessly by Bruce in his attempt to mold him into another Bobby Fischer but Josh slowly starts to lose his interest in winning all the chess tournaments that he enters. The very fact of his invincibility makes Josh feel uneasy since it's always expected of him to win, like the sun is expected to rise in the morning, that there's no fun or excitement in it for him any more. Losing becomes more of a growing experience for Josh and even arouses his passions in making him feel more human. Josh is also too sensitive to beat down his opponents, like Bobby Fischer did. That later lost him the championship game against the likewise seven year-old chess phenomenon Jonathan Poe, Michael Nirenberg.

After his defeat to Jonathan Josh is looked on as if he let down all those who believed in him and at the same time he starts to get his life back together as a young boy living a normal life and not carrying the weight of the entire world of chess on his shoulders. It's during this time that the real talent that Josh had in playing chess comes up to the surface, without him being driven relentlessly by Bruce. Those untapped talents leads him to go back to playing chess, first with his friend at the park Winnie, and then working his way back in winning a number of tournaments to his becoming a top chess champion competitor. All that finally earns Josh a re-match with Jonathan for the Junior Chess Championship of the US in Chicago at the conclusion of the film.

Powerful movie and very intense for the young boys and girls in it in how they drive and push themselves to be the best at the game of chess and at the same time putting themselves in danger of sacrificing their one and only childhood to do it.

Josh Waitzkin did reach the top back then when the movie "Searching for Bobby Fischer" was made in 1993 and is still there some ten years, and dozens of tournaments, later. He did it without losing both his childhood and his kind heart and sensitivity for his fellow man by doing it.

Chess is a challenging game that hasn't been given its due in the art of cinema, so it's a pity "Searching for Bobby Fischer", one of the few "chess movies" out there, offers an unconvincing, Hollywoodized treatment of the subject. This is one of those completely conventional, crowd-pleasing entertainments that make everything look too easy (it almost argues that one doesn't need to practice or study to become really good at something, as long as he has a natural gift for it; I'm sure the real Josh Waitzkin would dismiss all that as pure baloney), and rely on a predictable "Rocky"-type final showdown (in this case, against a mean-spirited little chess whiz). Nonetheless, with such a splendid cast (including an excellent performance by newcomer Max Pomeranc), it would be impossible for this film not to have its interesting and affecting moments. (**1/2)

For chessplayers and non-chessplayers alike, this is a secret gem of a movie.

Anyone who have watched Josh Waitzkin's tutorials in the Chessmaster computer-game will probably have done some research into who he is, and probably this movie will have popped up somewhere in your search.

For all of you who have found the movie that way: Go rent or buy it.

For all the rest: Go rent or buy it.

Why?: Cause it's not really about chess at all. It's a story about a 7 year old kid, taking a very keen interest in a hobby (and being VERY, VERY good at it), and also a story of his family and teachers pressuring him.

Besides a strong cast of people like Fishburn, Kingsley and Montegna, it also has some humorous moment (like the tuna-sandwich guy (William H. Macy)).

All in all, very watchable for everyone, and one of the first movies I've felt like commenting on here.

Only drawback: The link to Fischer was unnecessary, and doesn't add anything to the movie.

In SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER, Steven Zaillian's is the most complete and near-flawless film-work of the 1990s. I can't say merely "director's work" because he also wrote the screenplay. And (I have to presume) he chose Conrad Hall as d.p., James Horner for the music, Wayne Wahrman as film-editor, and he worked with a lighting director, sound director, set director and more -- each of whom did a job worthy of the highest praise. And the cast, the supernal cast -- many of whom have had larger and more celebrated roles, but none of whom has ever nailed a role more satisfyingly -- Kingsley, Mantegna, Allen, Fishburne -- even the smaller and cameo bits are effectively faultless -- by Linney, Stephens, Shalhoub, Pendleton. And of course, Pomeranc's work is a kind of miracle. Every part of it evokes from me applause for Zaillian's imagination, sensibility, knowledgeability, intelligence, judgment.

I confess I post this comment because none of the other comments I've seen on SEARCHING seems to me to realize how much Zaillian must have contributed to making this -- and I think it deserves this adjective -- GREAT movie. (I further confess I didn't first watch the movie until some three years after its debut because of its title. I was damned if I wanted to spend two hours in the presence of someone as nasty-seeming as Fischer. But the title of course was Fred Waitzkin's, the author of the source book. Fred, you cost me a few years -- but Steven Zaillian has made up for it many times over.)