1972 wasn’t a great year for the dreaded Commies. It was the year that Canada beat their unbeatable hockey team and Bobby Fischer took the title of World Chess Champion from their grand master Boris Spassky. These Cold War proxy battles for ideological supremacy seem almost quaint by today’s standards, but I can recall, even though I was just a kid when they unfolded, just how important these events were deemed at the time. Now, nearly four decades later, they seem the product of a bygone era, something that happened generations ago rather than during my lifetime.
The HBO documentary film, Bobby Fischer Against the World relies heavily on documentary footage and exclusive period photography to tell Fischer’s story, from his early days as a teenage chess prodigy in Brooklyn to his final years of paranoia and mental illness in Iceland. His defeat of Boris Spassky in 1972 was cause for national celebration and it’s hard to imagine that the match was treated in the day as not just a game, but a sport… right down to its coverage by ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Spectators gathered to watch it on TV like it was NFL Football.
The film reveals that Fischer was an odd man to serve as the champion of America capitalism in a Cold War showdown. His mother was a ardent communist and antiwar activist and in his later life he was drawn to conspiracies, anti-Semitic outbursts and bizarre claims of CIA persecution. He basically retired from the game and then disappeared from the public eye in the mid-’70s. In 1992, he agreed to a rematch with Spassky to be played in Yugoslavia, which was under U.N. sanctions at the time. Following the match, the U.S. State Department obtained an arrest warrant against him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to America.
As kooky and eccentric as Bobby Fischer was, I don’t quite know how relevant his story is to the world we live in today. The documentary is well done and the subject oddly intriguing, but there isn’t really much to it. He was a brilliant chess player, perhaps the greatest ever, and then he went bananas. I suppose the Cold War backdrop makes his story more resonant for those who can recall the time, but for anyone under 50, neither Bobby Fischer nor the world he was against exist anymore.
Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011)
The HBO documentary film, Bobby Fischer Against the World relies heavily on documentary footage and exclusive period photography to tell Fischer’s story, from his early days as a teenage chess prodigy in Brooklyn to his final years of paranoia and mental illness in Iceland. His defeat of Boris Spassky in 1972 was cause for national celebration and it’s hard to imagine that the match was treated in the day as not just a game, but a sport… right down to its coverage by ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Spectators gathered to watch it on TV like it was NFL Football.
The film reveals that Fischer was an odd man to serve as the champion of America capitalism in a Cold War showdown. His mother was a ardent communist and antiwar activist and in his later life he was drawn to conspiracies, anti-Semitic outbursts and bizarre claims of CIA persecution. He basically retired from the game and then disappeared from the public eye in the mid-’70s. In 1992, he agreed to a rematch with Spassky to be played in Yugoslavia, which was under U.N. sanctions at the time. Following the match, the U.S. State Department obtained an arrest warrant against him. Fischer remained wanted by the United States government for the rest of his life and never returned to America.
As kooky and eccentric as Bobby Fischer was, I don’t quite know how relevant his story is to the world we live in today. The documentary is well done and the subject oddly intriguing, but there isn’t really much to it. He was a brilliant chess player, perhaps the greatest ever, and then he went bananas. I suppose the Cold War backdrop makes his story more resonant for those who can recall the time, but for anyone under 50, neither Bobby Fischer nor the world he was against exist anymore.
Interesting, but not essential viewing.
La Sporgenza
Saturday, October 29th, 2011 at 11:49 am