A thrilling movie about Bobby Fischer takes a delicate look at the complex life of the American chess master. But don't be put off if you can't tell a passed pawn from an outposted knight, writes TARA BRADY

THERE'S A CRUCIAL moment in Liz Garbus's engaging new film Bobby Fischer Against the Worldwhen the eponymous chess player is interviewed ahead of his 1972 showdown against reigning world champion Boris Spassky. With the Cold War set to freezing, all eyes are on the self-taught Brooklyn prodigy as he prepares to take on the USSR at their own game. And there's just one thing that everybody wants to know.

“What about Bobby Fischer the man?” asks the interviewer. The American contender awkwardly guffaws at the notion. “I don’t do too much,” he replies. “I’m real tied up with chess.”

“That interview is one of the few times he actually commented on himself that we found,” says two-time Oscar nominee Garbus. “For much of the 90s we have radio broadcasts to access what he’s thinking and feeling. We gathered more than 200 hours of those and felt sure that somewhere in there he’d say something revealing about his mother or his father or his childhood. But having transcribed all those hours myself I can tell you he went on and on but there was nothing about Bobby Fischer.”

Fischer pushed Watergate and Vietnam off the front pages as he stole up on his Russian rivals. A master at 13 and a US champion at 14, he represented the US’s best shot at the world championship. The title match between Fischer and Spassky was duly billed as the third World War on a monochrome board; when Fischer threatened to walk away from the crucial Reykjavik showdown, Henry Kissinger placed the call to persuade him otherwise. “Social and political conditions turned the match into a global event and a unique opportunity for Cold War propaganda,” says Garbus.

Garbus is best known for powerful campaigning docs: The Farm, Angola USAfollowed "lifers" in a Louisiana prison, The Execution of Wanda Jeanpleaded for clemency for a lesbian African-American on death row. The film-maker was drawn to the Bobby Fischer story when his obituary appeared in 2008. "I was aware of Bobby Fischer the way I think most people are aware of Bobby Fischer," she says. "I knew he was the greatest American chess player of all time and I knew something about the tragic turn his life took. But I did not know much more beyond those broad strokes. And after I read his obituary I thought this story had so many interesting aspects in it – the politics, the personal life, that strange inter-relationship between genius and madness."

Using archive footage and interviews, Garbus has pieced together a thrilling sports movie accessible to those who don’t know a passed pawn from an outposted knight. The psychological issues that turned Fischer, a Jewish kid who grew up in the shadow of Ebbet’s Field baseball stadiu, into a raving anti-Semite are delicately handled. “We all want an airtight explanation,” says Garbus. “It’s because his mother told him to keep quiet about being Jewish. It was subliminal hatred of the mother. But it’s probably as much to do with his obsession with Israel and nuclear power and arms proliferation and US foreign policy. It’s so hard to unpick. He would say things like the Jews are responsible for the extinction of elephants because the trunk reminds them of an uncircumcised penis. It could just as easily have been something else, but that became the focus on the animus.”

Robert James Fischer was born in Chicago in 1943. The one-parent family moved around a lot during the war years – mother Regina worked alternately as a teacher, a nurse, a stenographer and a welder – until they settled in a shabby Brooklyn district.

Bobby’s sister Joan bought a plastic chess set when he was six and the siblings taught themselves to play from the instructions on the box. His birth certificate names German biophysicist Hans-Gerhardt Fisher, though it now seems likely that Paul Nemenyi, the Hungarian Jewish physicist, was Bobby’s biological father. The boy was only told after Nemenyi’s death in 1952. (“It was not handled well,” says Garbus.) Fischer grew increasingly estranged from his family as his chess game developed.

Bobby Fischer Against the Worldfinds its focus in Iceland where Fischer played Spassky for the 1972 world championship. There was plenty of attendant drama as Fischer turned up a week late and then refused to play until the TV cameras were removed. Were his actions merely psychological ploys or was something else going on? Garbus, like her film, is careful to avoid retrospective diagnoses. "Certainly many people who have watched the footage have mentioned Asperger syndrome and autism.

“We did want to avoid that kind of labelling. His psychological profile is a very complicated one. When he was young he was not psychotic and he could be charming. You see him on the talk shows and he could hold his own and have a laugh about himself. It’s not the case that he was always socially awkward or that he couldn’t make eye contact.”

After Reykjavik, Fischer never played a competitive game again, save an exhibition match against Spassky in former Yugoslavia in 1992. Fischer’s participation was ruled a violation of then president George Bush’s Executive Order 12810 against engaging in economic activities in Yugoslavia. An arrest warrant was issued and he never returned to the US. Even as a young man Fischer had been attracted to what Garbus calls “far out ideas” about government cover-ups and nuclear development. He loathed Israel and US foreign policy and was heard rejoicing on a Philippines radio station on September 12th, 2001. “I applaud the act,” he said. “This just shows, what goes around that comes around, even to the United States.”

Had chess driven Bobby Fischer insane? No, says Garbus. “There’s no rule here. Gary Kasparov has gone on to have a mightily interesting career. Anthony Saidy was a doctor and a Grandmaster. Chess, instead of making Bobby insane, is what kept him sane. As long as he was working toward his goal of becoming world champion he was together. He worked incredibly hard. After that happened I think there was space for these other ideas to really take over.”

We see him in old footage responding to inquiries about his chess-obsessed childhood: “It would have been better if it was a little more balanced, a little more rounded,” says Fischer with a shrug. “But what can you do?”

Bobby Fischer Against the World is showing at the IFI, Dublin and at Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast

Chess on Film

BLAZING SADDLES

Cleavon Little's newly arrived sheriff lists his interests: "Oh, I don't know. Play chess . . . screw . . . " so Gene Wilder says "Well, let's play chess." Ha.

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR

Faye Dunaway fondles pieces and smoulders outrageously as she trounces Steve McQueen at chess. You try playing when La Dunaway is making eyes at you over the board.

SUPERMAN 2

In the movies, chess is used as shorthand for genius: see the nerds in Silence of the Lambsor Mr Spock in Star Trek. It's equally utilised to indicate supervillainy: see Gene Hackman's tremendous Lex Luther. We know he's up to no good when we see him playing his bumbling, dull-witted assistant Otis (Ned Beatty) in his cell: "Otis, do you know why the number 200 is so significant in our relationship? Because it's your weight and my IQ."