Bobby Fischer Against the World details the life and career of the outstanding chess player and the eleventh official world chess champion, Bobby Fischer, who passed away in 2020. It shows how much he sacrificed to reach such a level of success and how much of a strain it put on his well-being.
The story portrayed in the documentary by Liz Garbus is quite a significant portrayal of the life of the chess genius who inspired the popularity of this game all over the world. There are exclusive interviews with Fischer’s friends and relatives as well as with famous chess players such as Garry Kasparov, Susan Polgar, Larry Evans, and Lothar Schmid. It consists of fresher clips of the chess world title match of 1972 between Fischer and Boris Spassky. This was during the height of the Cold War, and the match won by Fischer was used by the Nixon administration as a victory over the communist ruling Russia.
Bobby Fischer Against the World also describes the worst decisions and actions that define the post-1972 part of Fischer’s life. He resigned from the world chess championship in 1975 to Karpov since he did not want to go through the embarrassment of having lost. But he retired from competition when he was still in his prime, and he stopped playing under the spotlight and only joined low-key chess tournaments.
The interesting documentary movie tells the story of the rise and fall of Fischer. The story revolves more around his obsession with the game and how, with the skills that he had, nothing could beat him. At some point, he was fired, and as a result, his pursuit of the perfect rectangle led to his mental breakdown. This lifestyle culminated in the appalling remarks he made after terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, which transformed him into an international outlaw. Fischer passed away in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2008 at the age of 64, but his contribution to chess cannot be erased.
