Review of Pawn Sacrifice

tag for future reference.

"Plot Sacrifice"

The film got almost everything else wrong too. Fischer lost to Spassky in round six. The film makes it the final round.

I just saw the movie a few hours ago. There were only two of us in a major theater. The film did explain (in text) that there were many games left after round six. I thought the film was fabulous, even with the errors. That acting was insane. If all you want is accuracy of the games, go to <the site that you know I am talking about>.

I want to know (among other things) if the first confrontation between Fischer and Spassky was in Santa Monica.

Fischer and Spassky had played five times prior to 1972.

1) Mar del Plata, 1960, Spassky 1-0 Fischer, King's Gambit

2) Santa Monica, 1966, Spassky 1-0 Fischer, Grunfeld

3) Santa Monica, 1966, Fischer 1/2-1/2 Spassky, Ruy Lopez

4) Havana, 1966, Fischer 1/2-1/2 Spassky, Ruy Lopez

5) Seigen, 1970, Spassky 1-0 Fischer, Grunfeld

The words in bold are from my post. I was referring to that part of the film that concerns the Piatigorsky Cup.

There were two round six games in the film. Spassky -- Fischer, Piatigorsky Cup 1966, round six was presented in the film as the final round and also as the sole meeting of the two in that event. 

Round six of the 1972 World Championship was presented correctly, except for a voice that stated Fischer had abandoned his favorite Sicilian Defense.

I became emotionally invested in the film and tolerant of the numerous small liberties taken with known facts. I'm am even prepared to justify the nefarious 1.h4 h5 scene.* However, the statement about the Sicilian Defense in round six of the World Championship caused me pain. Real pain of a sort that I rarely experience in the theatre.

Immediately after leaving the theatre, I walked to the food court next to the theatres in the mall, sat at a table, and typed on my phone the response that is post 25 in this thread.

*Throughout the film, middlegame positions were set up from memory and from diagrams or annotations in books and magazines. We can imagine that the moves 1.h4 h5 are not Fischer playing through a game from the beginning, but beginning to set up a position from notation. 

hmm thats plausable :D

I see.

Another thing I wondered about was whether the girl, to whom Fischer lost other than a chess game, was real...and also who hired her!

One of the movies I have ever seen without violence since I was a kid...maybe they had to throw something in (even if very little, with the girl), if Fischer wasn't the type to get into fights.

The first post in this thread, the one containing Sam Sloan's review, addresses this point.

You can decide for yourself whether Sam Sloan has the best and most accurate information on that aspect of Fischer's life. Sloan kept one of Walter Browne's secrets on a similar matter, revealing it only after Browne was safely in the grave.

Interesting. I have actually stayed (twice) at the hotel in Santa Monica at which they showed Fischer staying, and I am very familiar with that city. A very colorful (literally) hotel, if you recall. It is not "flea bag" as Fischer stated in the movie...certainly not the Ritz though.

Larry Evans introduced Fischer to a call girl.  Fischer (age 17) did poorly in the tounament.

The reason was that the call girl was pretty bad at analysing endgames.  But her openings were reportedly excellent. ;^)

Not touching that!

That's a case for Sam Spade, I mean Sam Sloan.

I wonder why the experience so phazed Fischer. One would have thought that making love would have relaxed him or turned him into Bond, James Bond but it seems to have left him with the opposite effect, to have deeply troubled him.  Perhaps it was a matter of conscience, perhaps he was intoxicated with love and could not concentrate on his variations?

Perhaps he was autistic and the experience was utterly foreign to him and beyond his experience. Perhaps he was a virgin up and until this point in his life. I'm going with the latter with a very strong dab of the former. I was criticised on another thread for suggesting that Fischer was a monoglot (i.e. spoke only one language). I was harangued by those who pointed out that he spoke many languages ... this misses the point. Fischer didn't speak Russian or German naturally or easily; he learnt these languages solely to read their respective chess publications. Fischer only spoke Chess, everything else was subsidiary. He was a reed in a very, very sophisticated pool; urbane, polyglot, immensely sure of their standing and intellect. Fischer was a boy amongst these men - he knew it, and resented it deeply. Perhaps that's why he took such delight in crushing them. Then he ran. Karpov was on the horizon, so too computers, his genius was about to be exposed, butterflied.

For those wanting more info on Larry Evans and the Fischer night out I suggest looking into "Pal Benko - My life and Games" Benko/Silman - especially the chapter dealing with Larry Evans, Fischer, et al.

"A very very sophisticated pool"

I'm guessing you imagine strong players to be sophisticated because they're good at chess. Any additional skills they have make them more than just chess players. You don't know that they do, but you imagine they must because they're so good at chess.

Fischer had additional skills, but they don't count because he was only a chess player. In effect, because he was so good at chess, he was a reed.

Which is funny because in the first part good at chess = sophistication, but for Fischer it = reed.

A friend was talking with Anthony Saidy last weekend, and he told me that Saidy hates the movie.  I would imagine coming from someone that knew Fischer, and was around then, im sure he wasnt happy with what hollywood does to movies. 

Makes entertainment?

He didn't like it because he couldn't suspend disbelief and enjoy the drama because he knew the people and events too well.

There is nothing wrong with entertainment, but when you change historical facts for the sake of "entertainment" thats not entertainment, thats lying.

Hollywood never gets history right. Sometimes they falter on the small things. Sometimes the main story is flawed.

Mississippi Burning (1988) offers one example that comes to my mind because I like it and have taught it in college classrooms. That film presents heroic White FBI agents struggling to convince a reluctant African American community in the South to assist in the gathering of information. The fear of those oppressed is a compelling story. The truth is another matter. The Black population of Mississippi spent years trying to elicit the interest of the FBI in the string of racial crimes. Only when two White northern men disappeared did the FBI send agents.

Although a compelling drama that says much that is true of race relations in the South in the 1960s, the central plot of the film gets the true story backwards. It offers instead Hollywood's common theme for stories of race issues: heroic White knights rescuing helpless victims of color. More often in real life, oppressed minority groups labor against overwhelming odds to induce the justice system to act in accordance with the law.

Pawn Sacrifice also perpetuates another common Hollywood theme: chess players are nuts. In this case, however, that's accurate for their main character. The errors in the film are small details, but the central story about Fischer rings mostly true.

Like Mississippi Burning, Pawn Sacrifice offer a reasonably accurate view of certain aspects of American culture in the 1960s-1970s. The small errors, however, torment chess players. Chess players have been the principal audience so far.