[blind-chess] Newspaper review only of Bobby Fischer against the World Documentary
- From: Eddyz69@xxxxxxx
- To: blind-chess@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2011 14:59:04 -0400 (EDT)
‘Bobby Fischer Against the World’ documentary on HBO - The Boston Globe
_www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2011/06/06/bobby_fischer_against_the_world_do
cumentary_on_hbo/_
(http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2011/06/06/bobby_fischer_against_the_world_documentary_on_hbo/)
No one had ever seen anything like Bobby Fischer. He was the American chess
genius who went mad.
You like ‘Bobby Fischer Against the World’ documentary on HBO.
BOBBY FISCHER AGAINST THE WORLD
On: HBO
Time: Tonight at 9
In 1972, at the height of the Cold War, Fischer, 29, took the world
championship from the Russian Boris Spassky in
Reykjavík, Iceland. It was billed as
the Ali-Frazier slugfest of chess. The world was transfixed by the match.
After winning, Fischer instantly became one of the most famous people on
the planet and then disappeared. He refused
to defend his title in 1975, and drifted
into years of increased isolation and paranoia until he died, at 64, back
in Reykjavík, in 2008.
Robert James Fischer’s story is astonishing on and off the chess board, and
tonight’s HBO documentary “Bobby Fischer
Against the World’’ captures it well.
The title is apt; in his mind, it was Bobby Fischer against the world. He
was a hothouse orchid who had never had
social skills — his world was chess —
and ability to deal with life.
Born in 1943, he grew up in a modest Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment with a
sister and often absent mother. His parents
divorced when he was young, and his biological
father, a man named Paul Nemenyi, with whom his mother had had an affair,
was a passing wraith in his life. Bobby
became the ultimate loner who, as an
adult, grew to see vast conspiracies lurking around him.
His mania is well-documented. What’s not is the sadness beneath it. For all
of his appalling behavior, he is,
somehow, a sympathetic figure.
Director Liz Garbus gives us a first-rate roster of on-air voices, from
former world champion Garry Kasparov to
author Malcolm Gladwell, Dick Cavett and
a number of former grandmasters who provide sharp insights into the man.
But it soars on the rich footage she
presents of Fischer behaving on the world
stage.
This is addictive television. Garbus also plumbs the connection between
genius and mental illness. They were for
Fischer, says one man, “joined at the hip.’’
Gladwell, who has written books about winners and innovators, adds, “Genius
is also the determination to do X. It’s
not just the talent. There are always
10,000 hours of deliberate practice first.’’
Fischer put in the hours. He started playing chess at 6, and later haunted
chess clubs all over New York. We see the
youngster, thin and pale, poring over
a chess board. He was a sensation who, at 15, became the youngest
grandmaster in chess history.
The title fight in Reykjavík almost didn’t happen because of Fischer’s
petulant behavior. He made it there at the
last minute only because Henry Kissinger,
President Nixon’s national security adviser, pleaded with him by phone to
go for his country.
Once there, he nearly ceded the first match because he was late. He lost it
anyway and failed to show up for the
second. He complained about the noise of
the television cameras in the room and persuaded Spassky to play in
another room, absent the cameras, with the match
shown on closed-circuit screens.
Down by two, a nearly insurmountable lead, Fischer came back to win,
including one game that drew applause from
Spassky himself. And then he was gone. His
paranoia (an ability to see every possible attack against him that made
him lethal on a chess board) ruined
relationships. He saw dark plots against him
by the US government and the Israeli Mossad. Despite the fact that he was
Jewish, he spewed anti-Semitic cant.
Fischer ended up a fugitive, perhaps what he was always meant to be. He
played Spassky in a match in Yugoslavia in
1992 (he won), violating US sanctions
against the country, and was promptly indicted by the US government. He
was on the lam until 2004, when he was
arrested in Tokyo on immigration law violations.
His life had become both tragic and farcical. He pleaded with Iceland to
take him in to avoid returning to the
United States, and Iceland, site of his greatest
success, made him a citizen. He returned there looking almost
unrecognizable: bulky, wild gray hair and beard, wild
eyes, and bad teeth. His mania wore
on those close to him. One of his Icelandic friends concluded, “I’d had
enough of him.’’
So what is Fischer’s legacy? A troubled genius? Is that it? No, says one
commentator: “His games are his monument.’’
Sam Allis can be reached at
_allis@xxxxxxxxxx (mailto:allis@xxxxxxxxx) .
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.
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