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2025 National Civics Bee
Film: "Pawn Sacrifice"
Film: "Pawn Sacrifice"
This event is no longer active.
Friday, October 9, 2015 - Thursday, October 15, 2015
CST
Art Center Cinema
150 S. Santa Fe
Salina, KS 67401
You don’t need to be a chess master to appreciate director Edward Zwick’s fascinating portrait of chess legend Bobby Fischer—or to figure out that the title has a double meaning. Pawns are routinely sacrificed on the metaphoric battlefield of the chess board, but Zwick’s film suggests that Fischer was a “pawn,” too, a lonely genius who found himself used as a psychological weapon and propaganda tool against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. As the U.S. sought an honorable endgame for the Vietnam War, Fischer’s formidable mastery of a game that the Soviet Union had embraced made him an unlikely American hero. But the mantle of hero weighed heavily on Fischer’s psyche. His chillingly intense focus on chess and prickly, perfectionist nature made him difficult to love, yet he became a celebrity our nation proudly claimed as its own, an example of American intellectual superiority and competitive grit. The defining moment of Fischer’s career was his winning the World Chess Championship in 1972, besting the Soviet champion Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). The film opens in 1967, though, when Fischer has already blazed an intimidating trail through American chess competitions and is now somewhat burned out, exhausted by the attention and the grueling mental demands of the game. The American government, meanwhile, has started to see signs that the Vietnam conflict won’t be so easy to resolve. The U.S. was hungry for any kind of symbolic victory it could achieve against the Soviet Union, and it wasn’t happening in Southeast Asia. But enthusiastic lawyer Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) sees a chance at a victory on the chess board—the ultimate metaphor for war—if he can convince Fischer to get back on the circuit. Marshall enlists the aid of a Catholic priest named Bill Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard), a former chess player who actually beat Fischer and Spassky (when they were kids). Fischer’s respect for Father Lombardy gives Marshall the leverage he needs to persuade the eccentric semi-recluse to re-enter the limelight—the biggest stage of his career, in fact. Even though viewers know how the outcome of the contest, the build-up to the Fischer-Spassky match is still exciting and tense. The suspense comes not from our wondering if Fischer can beat the seemingly unstoppable Soviet, but waiting for his delicate, demanding ego to implode. Maguire’s performance is extraordinary. He’s always excelled at playing precociously intelligent, baby-faced loners who can’t quite connect fully with others. That sense of self-imposed isolation served him well in his most famous role, a certain boyish superhero who learned that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Maguire is even better as Fischer. He’s brave enough to make Fischer hard to like, yet we sense that his social awkwardness comes from the fact that his intelligence works at an incredibly high level. Most people’s brains are Model T’s. Fischer’s was a Lamborghini. Maguire conveys that sense of a mind working in hyper-drive, having to shift to a different level every time he does anything outside the abstract world of chess. We get the idea that the only thing that can keep Fischer’s intellect from burning itself out is chess—it gives him the pure mental exercise he craves. All else is unreal to him. Characters like this—who seem like they function somewhere on the autistic spectrum—can easily and permanently distance audiences, which is why it’s an accomplishment that Maguire still earns our empathy. He may not fully understand that he’s being used, but we know it, and it’s almost a tragedy that he can’t be left alone, as great a chess player as he is. We also get embroiled in Fischer’s constant paranoia—in this particular case, the Soviets really were spying on him, trying to find any chinks in his psychological armor that could be exploited. Liev Schreiber’s performance as Spassky makes a nice complement to Maguire’s—Schreiber is charismatic and always seems cool, calm, and collected. Just the fact that he could hide his own stress behind an implacable mask was enough to freak out Fischer (and the rest of America). He’s a great “villain,” though Schreiber gives him more humanity and a sly sense of humor that undermine any potential “cold-hearted Commie” clichés. When Fischer and Spassky duke it out on the chess board, particularly in the climactic Game 6 (widely considered the greatest game ever played), it’s a confrontation between two actors, too, sizing each other up, feinting and parrying, deciding each moment whether to go big or go small with their performances. It’s terrific fun to watch, and proves that intellectual contests are just as cinematically exciting as the most hyperkinetic sporting events. The movie doesn’t delve into the sad aftermath of Fischer’s life after that championship high point, but we really don’t need to see it: the seeds of Fischer’s depression, unhappiness, and psychotic delusion are clearly shown. Director Zwick and screenwriter Steven Knight, adopting a story by Knight, Stephen J. Rivele, and Christopher Wilkinson, are more interested in what Bobby Fischer meant to the world, and how his special kind of genius reacted to the unexpected celebrity. It’s a thought-provoking look at how different kinds of “heroes” get exploited, but there’s enough triumph to make the bitter edges palatable. Most of all, Pawn Sacrifice is a terrific showcase for Maguire and Schreiber, and the rare biopic that focuses on the internal struggles, not just the outward challenges, of a fascinating, larger-than-life figure.
(Rated PG-13 for brief profanity, smoking, and some sexual content.)
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Map of: 150 S. Santa Fe, Salina KS, 67401
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