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Josh (Max Pomeranc) is a 7-year old chess prodigy. This brilliantly acted film is based on an actual boy and deals with obsessive competition. The boy has only his innocent genius and a few concerned adults to protect him. He learns his chess by watching the chess hustlers in New York's Washington Square Park. The boy has a cute little lisp. He emerges from his toy room to mastermind chess. Max beautifully portrays an angelic little boy with a terrible gift and imbues the movie with irresistible naivete. The film is a wonderfully modulated story of a little boy with a gift and four adults, his parents and teachers, who struggle with the paradoxes and dangers of balancing a normal happy life against a gift so terrible. This is a good example of how costuming is used to develop characters.

Filmology

The film is a wonderfully modulated story of a little boy with a gift and four adults, his parents and teachers, who struggle with the paradoxes and dangers of balancing a normal happy life against a gift so terrible. The movie is based on a non-fiction book of the same name that was written by the real life boy's father, but the movie is highly fictionalized.

Setting

Cast

Josh (Max Pomeranc) is a 7-year old chess prodigy. Max beautifully portrays an angelic little boy with a terrible gift and imbues the movie with irresistible naivete.

Plot

This brilliantly acted film is based on an actual boy and deals with obsessive competition. Josh Waitzkin has only his innocent genius and a few concerned adults to protect him. The boy has a cute little lisp. He emerges from his toy room to mastermind chess. Josh begins the film as an ordinary American boy focused on baseball. After a chess match with his father he becomes fixated on chess. He learns his chess by watching the chess hustlers in New York's Washington Square Park. He makes friends with a hustler in the park named Vinnie who instructs him in speed chess. Josh's parents support his interest and engage a noted chess coach--Bruce. He teaches Josh the importance planning. Josh in the midst of all this rebels from Bruce's structured system and even seems to reject chess. He throws a match. The hope of winning a national championship seem unlikely.

Costuming

This is a good example of how costuming is used to develop characters. There is an obvious attempt to make him sympathetic by emphasizing that he is a casual dresser who wears tennis shoes. The movie poster makes this clear. The main character is basically someone who is many adults' idea of a perfect child: bright, polite, incredibly generous, sensitive, keeps things in perspective, etc. His chief opponent who doesn't have the kind of attitude that the script favors (I recall that the opponent doesn't attend school, so he can spend all of his time practicing) is very tidily dressed, in clothing that is whatever children's equivalent of business casual is called. By 1993, it would be too hard to believe that a child would be any more formal than that or they may have had him wear a suit all the time (by then the idea of a child or teenager wearing a suit all the time was considered comical, with the best example being Michael J. Fox on "Family Ties"). They may also have emphasized the casual dress of the main character as a way to try to interest people who would be put off by the idea of a movie about a chess player.

Created: 12:45 AM 10/28/2005
Last updated: 12:45 AM 10/28/2005