I'm starting to see it more fully.

On only being able to see one move ahead for the last 5 years.

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“Mate is 4 moves from the position in front of you. Don’t move until you’ve figured it out in your head. Don’t look to me for a hint.”

The 7-year-old boy sits with his arms on the table, looking at the chess board. We see his large eyes, looking at the pieces, then looking at his teacher.

The boy scrunches up his eyes, then raises his head to say:

“I can’t do it without moving the pieces.”

“Yes you can,” says his teacher.

The camera stays on the close-up of the boy during this line. His eyes dart around the board, examining the pieces, quickly. Perhaps a little anxious.

“Clear the lines of men in your head, one at a time, and the king will be left standing alone, like a guy on a street corner.”

The boy stays in the same position, eyes moving from chess piece to chess piece, examining, searching.

“Here, I’ll make it easier for you.”

The teacher sweeps his right arm across the chess board, quickly, knocking all the pieces off the board. They fly across the room.

The boy looks up and sits up, startled, and watches the pieces settle on the floor. He looks back to his teacher, quizzically.

Camera on the teacher, who looks at the boy, then looks down at the now-empty board.

The boy takes his eyes off his teacher and also stares down at the board. Some emotion flashes across his eyes — fear? confusion? sadness? — and then he settles into his previous position. Arms on the table, chin on the wrist of his top arm. He stares at the table.

The boy looks at several squares on the chess board, then he sits up, alert.

“Knight to C-8.”

The teacher looks at the board, then says quietly, “Yes.”

Tight closeup of the boy’s eyes. And we see his eyes grow a bit wider, the light of the room shining in them. He looks quietly elated. Proud.

He figured it out.

Searching for Bobby Fischer — released in 1993 — moved me deeply when I first saw it. Parts of the movie — and particularly this scene — rise unbidden from my memory, from time to time.

It's a film about giving your full focus to doing the best you can in the time available to you, not necessarily being the best.

This review of the film, from Jeremy Burgess here on Substack, gets it right — in a lot of ways, this film is a sports movie. That never occurred to me when I first watched it, but I see it now, the same way Josh looked 4 or 5 steps ahead in the final match and saw how to move forward.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, don't read that piece. Watch the film soon, if you can.

At the heart of this movie is the choice young Josh has to make — trust the stern teacher who has won all the awards that his dad believes will take him to greatness or listen to the the fast street-chess player he loves playing with with in Washington Square Park. (Laurence Fishburne bristles with brilliant energy in this one.)

Or, find the third thing? Trust them both.

But this scene, this moment where the teacher sweeps all the chess pieces off the board and tells the boy to not move until he can see it in his head?

That scene has been rising up in me so often the last few months that I had to watch it again — and write this piece — to figure out why.

I think I know why now.