Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen on Nostr: I have no idea how seriously the film wants us to regard what Ben Kingsley, playing ...

I have no idea how seriously the film wants us to regard what Ben Kingsley, playing real-life chess writer Bruce Pandolfini, has to say about chess or Fischer or Josh Waitzkin. I would presume, however, that this scene is meant to be one of those mic-drop moments where a character's stubbornness is finally broken down by someone else's passion—in this case, the supposedly pure and elevated passion for the greatness of #chess that's been sparked in Pandolfini upon seeing the young Josh Waitzkin playing chess in the park.

It's a familiar trope of such movies: a working-class parent refuses to believe that their kid is *special*, has some "gift", until an expert comes swanning in to tell them. "I can see what you cannot see, I can see the *genius*."

I have lived long enough to learn that Bobby Fischer wasn't worth this kind of adulation. It's *bullshit* what this simulacrum of Bruce Pandolfini is saying. I'll be charitable enough to assume that the writing of the *Searching for Bobby Fischer* screenplay had very little to do with the actual thoughts and feelings of Bruce Pandolfini but...who knows? Maybe Pandolfini really felt this way about Josh Waitzkin, and about chess, and about Bobby Fucking Fischer.