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Chess is not an intrinsically cinematic event. Frankly, it can be boring to watch. Therefore, from the start of Pawn Sacrifice (2015), director Edward Zwick chooses not to delve into the mechanics of the game itself. Far from attempting to make the audience understand the movements on the board, he uses cinematic means to help us enter the head of Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and relate to what the player is feeling.

The film employs a range of narrative, visual and audio techniques to engage us in chess – everything apart from actually telling us anything about the game of chess.

The first time we see Fischer playing, as a young child tuning out the chatter of his mother’s Communist Party gathering in his 1950s Brooklyn home, we see the moves Fischer imagines superimposed as arrows and square numbers on the screen. From then on, Fischer’s chess experience is heightened for our benefit through extreme close-ups, fast-paced editing, and jump cuts, as we watch fingers moving the pieces and players’ expressions intermixed with the distractions of the environment. When Fischer relives his games (after the rare occasions when he loses), he sees the fateful moves close up in black and white, with the air of a trauma he has not yet recovered from.

Sound design serves as a key device for engaging us in Fischer’s pursuit of total immersion and concentration within the game. Over the course of the film, the soundscape depicts Fischer’s lifelong struggle to achieve silence against the backdrop of a world that buzzes and plots around him.

Meanwhile, editing techniques – extensive reliance on montage and splicing together real and faux-historical footage – attempt to escalate the sense of excitement surrounding the chess world. The film fast-forwards through years of Fischer’s life and accelerates the story with condensed, entertaining sequences. The choice emphasizes the humor of some episodes (as in Fischer’s childhood years playing chess against old men around New York) and the intense global drama of others (as in the news reports on Fischer’s notorious absence from Game 2 of his 1972 World Championship series against Soviet opponent Boris Spassky, played by Liev Schreiber). The heavy use of the montage technique, however, sometimes results in skipping over central dramatic beats and build-ups and moving so far afield from the chess game as to leave it behind.

Most of all, Pawn Sacrifice dramatizes chess through its focus on the psychological back-and-forth surrounding the game, rather than in the game itself, placing the most pivotal story moments off the board. On a 1971 Dick Cavett show, Fischer said that the greatest pleasure of chess, equivalent to baseball’s home run, is “when you break his ego” – the moment when the other guy knows he’s finished. “He sees it’s coming and breaks all up inside,” Fischer said in the interview, which is recreated in the film.

Instead of showing us every checkmate, Pawn Sacrifice underscores the moment when each player knows he’s lost – which is often before the game begins. When we see Fischer show up to a match at the last possible moment, making his move one second away from forfeiting, his opponent’s face reveals that Fischer’s ploy has already won; the film cuts to the defeated player later agreeing to be sent home with a fake influenza diagnosis. Likewise, from the look in Fischer’s eyes when he first shakes the formidable Spassky’s hand, we know that Fischer has lost this early confrontation with the chess giant.

[SPOILER] Fischer’s tactics to defeat Spassky off the board are complex, and we don’t know whether they’re fully intentional, but they prove effective. He begins the 1972 series with an almost suicidal display, melting down in the first game, making a sudden move that hands the victory to Spassky, and failing to show up to the second game. But oddly, just as Spassky is about to be handed the title without earning it, the Soviet finds his generally unflappable confidence undermined. Seeing that Fischer is so determined to win on his terms that he will risk everything, including sanity and reputation, Spassky understands that Fischer is willing to push himself further and may ultimately win as a result.

Later, in Game 3 of the 1972 championship, we watch Spassky become distracted to obsession by a sound no one else hears (a key role reversal, since until this moment we have seen Fischer repeatedly tortured by excessive sensitivity to noise). Once Spassky starts unscrewing his chair to pursue the source of his irritation, the scene cuts – again, this moment when the player’s ego breaks tells us all we need to know about the result of the match. When we finally witness Fischer’s dramatic win in Game 6, a game so elegantly played that even Spassky applauds, the film considers the series over and the outcome decided, even though the masters actually played 21 games in total.

Ultimately, the chess here is transformed into a cinematic experience of immersion, showdowns, psychological tricks, and political swagger. The viewer need not know the first thing about the game’s rules to engage in this filmic interpretation of the game, and in fact the film is not really interested in chess at all.