- Network: HBO
- Series Premiere Date: Jun 6, 2011
Critic Reviews
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So far it's the televised documentary film of the year, with its truths stranger than fiction from opening move to checkmate.
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Robert James Fischer's story is astonishing on and off the chess board, and tonight's HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World captures it well.
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[Garbus] captures the epic, almost mythical scope of his talent and thus the tragic height of his fall.
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Director Liz Garbus conveys much of the excitement and turmoil surrounding the subject of her documentary, Bobby Fischer Against the World.
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Garbus, director of the Oscar-nominated, Emmy-winning "The Farm: Angola, USA," fills in many of the blanks--to an impressive extent, given the obsessively guarded privacy of her subject--in a film that is both meditative and exciting, like the game it concerns, and mercilessly penetrating even as it reserves judgment on a man whose outrageousness practically demands it.
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This intelligent, sensitive portrait effectively explores a lost childhood and remarkable mind. It's engrossing to a point, then tiresome.
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Despite what we know about his troubled childhood, Fischer remains enigmatic.
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The film, which kicks off HBO's long, annual summer of well-curated documentary offerings on Monday nights, is certainly absorbing. For those only vaguely familiar with the competitive chess circuit (or even the game's 1,500-year history), Bobby Fischer Against the World is both an easy introduction and a thorough recounting of Fischer's improbable rise to superstardom some 40 years ago.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 5 out of 8
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Mixed: 1 out of 8
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Negative: 2 out of 8
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Sep 9, 2011