Bobby Fischer Against the World

HBO documentary portrait of American “rock-star chess player” Fischer: his rise to triumph over Soviet chess champ Boris Spassky, and his decline into tabloid notoriety as a recluse and political pariah.

"Forty years ago a game of chess brought the world to a standstill. The 1972 World Chess Championship in Reykjavik saw American Bobby Fischer take on Boris Spassky, the sleek show pony of the Soviet Union’s colossal chess programme. The prickly, unpredictable, self-determining American versus the cool paragon of Soviet cohesion: they were fighting the Cold War mano a mano on a chessboard. Left to his own devices by his activist single mother, Fischer had taken up chess at six and made himself US champion by 15, but he was never cut out to don the mantle of American hero." (Source: NZ International Film Festival 2011)

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