A good movie

Even though I always had no talents whatsoever in chess, I always thought it was fascinating so I was quite eager to check this movie. I have to admit that, even though I obviously knew Garry Kasparov (with Bobby Fisher, they were/are the only chess players really famous outside the chess world), I have to admit that I had never heard of Judit Polgár and her sisters before watching this movie. Well, it turned out to be a really straightforward basic documentary but I thought it was a really interesting watch. Indeed, Polgár was such a bright kid, a genius in this field, and then a fascinating woman who remained at the top through most of her career which was obviously really impressive. In fact, up until she played against Kasparov for the first time, they made her seemed to be unbeatable but it wasn’t the case. Indeed, she was apparently very successful but she didn’t win all the time and I wish they talked a little bit more about what happened when she might lose a game. What was also amazing for me was how sexist the chess world used to be (and maybe still is?). Indeed, if there is a sport for which men and women should be able to compete against each other, it would be definitely chess. And, yet, basically up until Polgár and her sisters showed up and played just as well and very often better than most men, it finally changed (at least, a bit). In fact, it’s a shame that it took her 15 games to beat Kasparov (did she ever beat him again afterwards?) because, as a result, she remained ‘only’ the best female chess player while he remained the best chess player ever. I think one of the things I enjoyed the most with this movie was how they displayed some chess moves in details. Like I said before, I’m really bad at chess and I can’t argue that I understood half of what they explained but it was still really cool to go deeper in this sport. I really appreciated this technical side instead of saying endlessly that Polgár was amazing which still took at least a third of the running time. There was some discussion about the fact that the Polgár sisters were raised from a very early age to only learn to play chess and at a very intensive rate. However, they didn’t put too much focus on this aspect after all. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was probably too generic to be exceptional, it was still a decent watch though.