Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Libramedi Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Dhaval Vyas For those who do not play chess or know anything about it, the game is something that is commonly referenced in books, poetry, movies, etc. It is seen as somewhat of a metaphor for happenings in real life. For those who play chess and are in love with the game, it is something of an art or science, or something cosmic that is unexplainable. They may often be frustrated as to why the majority of society does not share their passion.Chess has survived for thousands of years and is arguably the hardest game in the world. Through the eons, if there is one name or one master that has towered above anyone else, it is the American Bobby Fischer. When Fischer defeated Boris Spassky in 1972, the match created more publicity than any other chess event in history (even more than when IBM's computer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in 1996). A lone American had defeated the mighty Soviet chess machine during the cold war. What should have been just the beginning of an already great career for Fischer, it was actually just the end.Bobby Fischer made one of the great disappearances of any famous person of the 20th century. He did not die, but was as elusive as Bigfoot after he won the world championship. For those who encountered him only would end of becoming frustrated because they realized he was slowly going insane. 20 years after winning the Championship (1992), Fischer reappeared to play Spassky for another match. When he appeared, it became even more obvious that the man had lost his mind. When the September 11th attacks happened, Fischer shocked the world when he applauded the acts on a radio program. He never played again and passed away in 2008.This HBO program is fantastic in that it is presented in a manner that is suitable for those who barely know anything about chess or those who know the intricate details of Fischer's career and life. It keeps the viewers' attention by playing nice music in the background throughout. The program shows numerous photographs and television footage that most people have never seen. The central focus of the program is the Fischer - Spassky match of 1972, but it juxtaposes all kind of other topics such as Fischer's family and love life, and his affiliation with a cult group. The program even has Henry Kissinger talking about the match. Kissinger had encouraged Fischer to follow through with the match when Fischer was about to not show up. But, the program does not blame Fischer's religious obsession with chess for this mental breakdown. It posits that it could have been a possibility.I will have to strongly disagree with one part of this documentary. It stated that when after Fischer won the world championship, he was arguably the most famous man in the world (aside from Jesus). I find this really hard to believe. One because Fischer was a merely just a chess champion and (2) there were many other gigantic figures at that time; Muhammad Ali, Richard Nixon, Chairman Mao, just to name a few.In the end, the enigma will always remain the enigma. Nobody really knows why Fischer quit playing after 1972 or what caused his mental disintegration. Even though he forfeited his title to Karpov in 1975, why did he completely give up playing even tournaments and simuls altogether? What we are left is speculation. Many chess lovers will proudly proclaim that Fischer was the best player of all time. There maybe some truth to this, but I believe Garry Kasparov finally deserves this title. This is because Kasparov was willing to take on all comers, human beings or computers. Kasparov did this for almost 3 decades. Kasparov defeated an ongoing Champion Anatoly Karpov (one of the top 5 players ever) 5 times and he continued to defend this title beating brilliant and talented young players - Ivanchuck, Shirov, Topalov, Anand, Short, Leko, Kramnik, Kamsky, and so many others for another 2 decades.*Please do not comment if you are going to get into a "greatest ever" debate - it will be yet another endless discussion and will lead to nowhere.* Fishcer's story is one of the great tragedies of chess, but in the short time that he was brilliant, he shined so brightly that it continues to illuminate to this day. Although his life ended to a sad decline, keep in mind, we remember and admire him for what he produced.

gregking4 Was Bobby Fischer the greatest chess player who ever lived? Probably, but as this HBO-produced documentaryreveals there was also a darker side to his genius. Drawing upon a wealth of fascinating archival footage, veteran documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus (Girlhood, The Execution Of Wanda Jean, etc) draws a complex portrait of the man, depicting him as stubborn, arrogant, obsessive and a temperamental but typically flawed genius who crumpled under enormous pressure. The portrait of Fischer is rounded out through a series of extensive and candid interviews with colleagues and those who knew him best. There is even an interview with a sad, pathetic and paranoid Fischer himself, filmed a couple of years before his death. Garbus traces his life from his first public appearances as a self-taught child prodigy, becoming US chess champion at the age of 15 and world champion in 1972, to his lonely death in Iceland in 2008 where the disgraced former champion was living in exile. The film spends a lot of time examining his challenge against Russian world champion Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, arguably the most famous chess match in history, looking at the psychological ploys Fischer used to rattle his opponent. The film also looks at the impact his victory had for the profile of chess in general, but the far more fascinating context of the Cold War paranoia against which the match was played is skimmed over. Following his victory Fischer's fragile mental state declined and he failed to deal with the public adulation that followed, and Garbus examines his tragic fall. The film unfolds in a somewhat conventional fashion, but it still makes for compelling viewing.

asc85 I was 11 years old in 1972, and I remember the whole Bobby Fischer/Boris Spassky thing. I was also aware of what happened to Fischer in his later years. So I'm familiar with the story, but by now means an expert. The film got mostly good reviews, so I was very interested in seeing this, and learning more about Fischer. However, there was hardly anything new in this documentary that I didn't already know about (and remember, I'm by no means a Fischer expert), and close to an hour of this film revolved around the Fischer/Spassky match. If you know nothing about Bobby Fischer, this is a good movie, but if you know nothing about Bobby Fischer, why would you see this movie in the first place? I see that this film won an award for Best Documentary at the Newport Beach Film Festival. I knew nothing about this festival, but the fact that a film like this could win ANY type of award does not make me think that the Newport Beach Film Festival will soon be rivaling Sundance or Cannes.

Xenios Theocharous Making a documentary film is always a challenge for the creator, especially when the topic has been barely touched. Director Liz Garbus, in making the documentary "Bobby Fischer Against the World", had to overcome three critical obstacles.First she had to portray Fischer's complex character. Since filming started after his death, Garbus had to dig up footage—scattered around the world—and weave together the various strands of Fischer's life. Not only that, she had to gather together all those who played important role in his life.The second critical obstacle for Grabus was that she had to depict the period where the tension of the Cold War was emerging (because of the Vietnam War), and the whole world was going through major changes, with the entire planet becoming a mortal battlefield. Although chess had started to become popular, the hostility of that time was somehow deeply reflected on the chessboard, and this was soon exploited even more, when the world of politics penetrated into the world of chess.Garbus' third critical obstacle was that Fischer's life can be divided into three parts: i) his life (and chess career) before 1972, ii) his battle for the title in 1972, and iii) his life after 1972. This means that Fischer's life is often summarized within the boundaries of a single event, stripping away all the aspects that formed his character up to that point. How was Garbus then, going to tell the story of a man who spent half his life playing chess and then disappeared? To overcome these obstacles, Garbus chooses a nonlinear storytelling. Going back—to Fischer's childhood and early years, and then later—forward to his life after the championship games, Garbus uses the 1972 events as the spine of the story.Visiting Fischer's childhood and adolescence, Garbus shows us his love for (and dedication to) chess, his mother's strong personality, his father's abandonment and absence, and how the precipitate publicity affected his privacy. But what no one mentions in the interviews is that Fischer, at a young age, struggled to gain the respect of others. He was a boy among men, playing (and trying to understand) their game. That struggle was slowly draining away Fischer's childhood (and transforming the first 29 years of his life to a prolonged chess game), the result of which Garbus masterfully displays—at what could be the climax of the film—when she shows Fischer, soon after he won the title, in an amusement park sitting inside a little airplane—flying towards his lost childhood.The tense climate between the U.S. and the Soviet Union—and its echo in the chess world, is brilliantly shown by Garbus through the rare and previously unseen footage she managed to dig up. Unfortunately, Spassky is the great absentee from this documentary. Although the title of the film is Bobby Fischer Against the World (meaning that Fischer fights against everyone and no one at the same time, indicating that Fischer's whole world is nothing but chess—and Fischer himself is nothing but chess—therefore Fischer's only opponent is… Fischer), Garbus mistakenly diminishes Spassky's unique and independent personality by putting him in the same basket with all the others. After all, Spassky was the final external obstacle in Fischer's road to the crown—the one guy he did not yet win. And to paraphrase Thorarinsson, "I think we can agree on the point that Mr. Spassky exists".However, Garbus does a great job regarding the events of 1972. She leaves out, though, the drama of the two players not having similar chairs (with Fischer's chair being superior to Spassky's), but generally, she covers the events accurately enough: from Fischer's training program, his antics of not showing up, his lists of demands, his growing hatred towards the Soviets, the defending of his principles, the antipathy to cameras and photographers, to his so long-awaited win, Garbus quietly and unpretentiously illustrates the events of the 1972 summer in Iceland.There is another level in this documentary, a hidden level that Garbus unconsciously created. All the interviewees in the film are trying to label Fischer to a degree that fits their world of understanding. They believe that Fischer should have a particular role in their world, and serve that role in a specific manner.We are in a society where everyone needs something to have a form in order to understand it. That's why we put labels on everything, and don't let things just be. In that sense, for me, Fischer died in 1972 and reborn after that, as a man with no home and no childhood, trying to play chess on a higher level, the one we all play and eventually lose