"You've lost. You just don't know it yet." – Joshua Waitzkin
Bobby Fischer, regarded by some as the greatest chess player who ever lived, lost interest in the game several decades after becoming World Chess Champion. As Fischer grew as an artist – and chess is, in a sense, an art with its very own aesthetic – he began to outgrow the game entirely. He had discovered all there was to discover, mastering the board and finding no value within its black and white grid.
What's more, Fischer began to develop a feeling of profound disgust for the game. He now held his opponents in contempt, seeing them all as "inferior players" who possessed neither the skill nor artistry to beat him. By the time Fischer began contemplating quitting the game forever, the heyday of chess, when grandmasters were superstars and games were heavily promoted international events, was already long gone. Younger players began copying the moves of the masters and chess became a form of memorised routines and pre-rehearsed tactics. Chess, as an art, was dead.
For a while Fischer fought against the mechanization of chess (he even beat several chess super-computers), creating a variety of flamboyant and fresh tactics (even a series of new rules and objectives), but eventually he gave up. Having given himself to a cruel mistress whose 64 squares and 32 pieces had demanded complete and total loyalty, submission and sacrifice, he eventually decided to quit and move on to other things. Almost like a modern day Godard ("Cinema is dead! It is useless!"), he was an angry artist too big for a dead art-form. He had conquered it, achieved all he could, and found nothing of value in this victory. Over the following decades he would join religious cults, bounce from one confused romantic relationship to the next, always feeling miserable and unsatisfied. Seeking the sort of close human relationship that the cold confines of the chessboard could never offer, he reportedly died with the following words on his lips: "Nothing eases suffering like human touch."
"Searching for Bobby Fischer" is about real-life chess prodigy Joshua Waitzkin. At first glance it seems like your regular sports movie – Waitzkin fights various opponents until he faces and defeats Jonathan Poe, the current National Scholastic Champion – but it pushes past this to become a surprisingly dark film which seeks to find the value (if any) of art, the meaning (or lack thereof) of professional mastery, and the sinister truths which emerge when one considers the libidinal motivations behind any and all human actions.
The film begins with Waitzkin's father hiring a strict instructor, played by Ben Kingsley, to teach the young boy to be as aggressive and skillful as Bobby Fischer. Kingsley teaches the kid to hold his opponents in contempt, that there is no inherent value in victory and that one can only win by dominating another human being. Victory is simply the inferiority of your opponent combined with your own cult-like sacrifices made to the board. Mastery is intimately intertwined with the super-ego, victory tied with aggression, even sadism.
Realizing that such dedication is turning his son into a robot, Waitzkin's mother turns to Laurence Fishburne, a chess hustler who plays on park benches. Fishburne teachers Waitzkin's to be spontaneous, to play fast and trust his instincts, to love the game and be gracious to those he plays.
Eventually the film becomes a kind of battle between the id, ego and superego. Fishburne represents the pleasure principle, playing purely for pleasure in the moment, whilst Kingsley represents the reality principle, teaching Waitzkin's to put his life on hold and give himself over totally to the board so that he may reap the benefits of mastery 10 years down the line.
The film's surface message is that one must achieve a sort of balance, symbolised by Waitzkin's merging of both Fishburne's and Kingsley's tactics during the film's climactic showdown. After this, Waitzkin's begins to take up other games (football, baseball, karate etc) and tries not to let chess suffocate his life. Chess thus becomes a kind of spiritual guide, like a medieval craftsman's way of life, where one does what one loves and humbly does it to perfection, and then moves on to another craft. Waitzkin – still a young man – would then go on to write self-help books, in which he espouses the realisation that victory and mastery ultimately means less than the process of acquiring knowledge within different fields. Conquer yourself and move on. There is no opponent but that within.
But does this work? In real life, a decade after this film was made, Waitzkin would become a master in various other forms (karate, Tai Chi etc), before coming to the same kind of mental breakdown that Bobby Fischer did many years ago. He bounced from one craft to the next, mastering them all, but of course finding no inherent value in this mastery.
Beyond its dark implications, the film works well as conventional entertainment. Chess is perhaps the most cinematic of games and so each chess scene here oozes a kind of palatable tension. Most of the film's best moments involve both audience members and chess players thrilled at having spotting obscure and daring combinations that, five to ten moves down the road, will inflict upon our opponents utter ruination. It's cool stuff.
8.9/10 – Novice director Steven Zaillian is largely unaware of this film's true implications. Likewise, most viewers see the film as a conventional sports movie with a gooey Hallmark Channel aesthetic. But in a way, Zaillian's ignorance works in the film's favour. He's making your typical sports movie, looking for the orgasmic pay off of victory (and family reconciliation), whilst Waitzkin's father (who wrote the story) is telling a far darker tale. This tale has to be in the background, denied, ignored, or always indirectly addressed.
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