Computer Chess

I thought it was real for an embarrassingly long time. Which made it that much greater. If you go watch this with your friends, I recommend you tell them it's a documentary.

The filming, the conversation, the characters are all very life like for that day and age. The realism is also one of its shortfalls, because at times it's a bit boring.

"Computer Chess" is a trip. It's a trip back to the 80s when nerds reigned supreme (if only in their rather limited social circles). More than that, it's a mind trip of dweebish proportions. We'll get to that later. First a few things you should know: The movie is almost entirely in black & white, rather grainy & unappealing video (4:3). This can be somewhat tiring on the eyes, compared to the 1080p digital glory we're accustomed to. But before you pass judgment you should know that the filmmakers purposely used an old Sony AVC-3260 b&w tube camera from the 70s. Director of photography Matthias Grunsky explains:

"These tubes also have a very specific soft character, which would not be easy to recreate in post. The cameras had electronic issues and sometimes would generate electronic noise when touching the camera body or the lens. All these artifacts combined add a transcendental character to the image and help express the sometimes unexplainable things that happen between man and computer in our story."

So right off the bat you can see that the film is artistically motivated. Whether you decide that it has significance, or whether you think it's just an annoying gimmick is up to you.

The second thing you should be ready for is near the end it makes a leap of logic concerning technology, in particular, artificial intelligence. Normally I don't care when science fiction films go off the deep end like that, but this film is closer to historical fiction (and does a great job, except for this one glitch). Overall it presents the rather ho-hum reality of technology in the 80s, and the humor is that 80s technology sucked! That's why it came as a surprise in one scene where suddenly technology surpasses what we could even hope for today. But I admit that plot twist is essential to the story & message. So, my fellow pocket-protected geeks in the audience, try to take it in stride.

The rest of the movie gets nothing but high praise from me. It's surprisingly accurate, and if you haven't guessed, I was an 80s kid who grew up thinking "Pong" and the Radio Shack TRS-80 were the greatest things the human race could ever achieve... so I knew that mentality well. How hilariously ironic it is to watch a movie about a conference of nerds who are lifelong-obsessed with creating a computer chess simulator which, today, wouldn't hold the average gamer's attention span past the welcome screen. But irony is the backbone of this film, and if you enjoy ironic comedies like "Ed Wood" (about the worst director who ever lived), "Best in Show" (about a bunch of freaks competing for whose dog is prettiest) or the unintentionally hilarious documentary "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" (about an 80s metal band called... can you guess?), then I think you'll get a real kick out of "Computer Chess".

An extra little push over the cliff, which some audiences may not like but I found intriguing, is the hyper stylistic approach to cinematography. Although visually bland (black & white video), there are some artistic tricks that the director used. For example, despite the nuts & bolts visual presentation, the director achieved a degree of surrealism by using quirky edits (unexpected, disorienting jump cuts) as well as deliberate audio synch mismatches. This compliments the rather surreal turn of events that occur--things that make you wonder "WTF just happened?" Some scenes seem totally random and disconnected, but memorable nonetheless. And without spoiling anything, I can say that "Computer Chess" has one of the most WTF endings I've ever seen.

Definitely not for audiences wanting to be dazzled by theatrics, visuals and fantastic plots, "Computer Chess" is a very minimalistic yet highly entertaining step back in time, giving us the rare opportunity to appreciate the absurdity of "hi-tech" in hindsight. The whole film happens over the course of 3 days in a roadside motel. But it's still a masterpiece. Sort of like the famous minimalist film "Das Boot" shot entirely in a submarine but full of depth & meaning, this movie shot in 2 or 3 rooms with no props but a bunch of dusty old computers really packs a lot. Maybe an alternate title for this nerdfest could be "DOS BOOT".

Hey, laugh it up. I worked a long time on that stupid pun.

If you are out of sleeping pills or have insomnia.

Guaranteed to put you to sleep. I actually had a fabulous nap - 2 or 3 of them actually - while attempting to keep my eyes open. There might have been a premise somewhere in there but only the director and his friends could tell you about it since everyone else will be fast asleep - or doing the neck dance of nodding in and out of sleep.

Computers, chess, retro, dry dialogue, vintage cameras.... on paper this could have been fun and quirky and a nice time.

Anyway, next time you feel too wired to sleep and don't have any substances to help you, put this on and you'll conk out in minutes (that or throw your TV against the wall).

I don't want to reveal too much here. No spoilers. I did not know anything at all about Computer Chess before I sat down at the local rep house to view it, maybe you shouldn't either. It seemed like it was an old documentary about an early (1979) contest to design a computer program that could beat a human being at chess. I thought, as I was watching it, that eventually the documentary would jump to the present day, and interview the participants in that contest, and provide revelations about the the development of artificial intelligence, and perhaps about the evolution of the participants in that early competition. But, at some point, maybe 10 or 15 minutes into the film, I realized that what I thought the movie was about was not at all what the movie was about. And I thought to myself, Wow! Incredibly the movie manages to merge a story about a bunch of extreme tech nerds with a story about a bizarre cult of seekers of sexual and spiritual awakening. My movie-going companion and I were both entranced all during the film, and couldn't stop talking about it afterwards.

This movie is the real deal: it's what we used to go to the movies for. Complexity, surprise, enthrallment, humor, enigmas, revelations. Ambiguity. Somehow a bunch of people down in Austin, Texas made the perfect movie.

I can sit through the most ponderous Joe Swanberg film, the most ridiculous thing ever directed by the Duplass brothers Jay and Mark, respectively, and can even tolerate monotony bestowed upon a talky independent movie in terms of my affection and devotion to the mumblecore movement in cinema. However, when watching a film by the proclaimed "godfather" of the movement Andrew Bujalski, I find myself in a figurative wrestling match between myself and his films. His films are well shot, wonderfully lit and captured given the minimal budgets, and are believably conducted from an acting standpoint, but when the characters open their mouths, not much interesting comes out and when the plot "gets going," not much noteworthy seems to happen. Arriving at the conclusion of his directorial debut Funny Ha Ha, his follow-up effort Mutual Appreciation, and now, his latest endeavor, Computer Chess (arguably his best reviewed film), I am met with nothing other than emptiness, isolation, and very little to write about.

When I enjoy a film that falls in line with the mumblecore movement, bearing a micro-budget, naturalistic dialog, simple but thoughtful acting, themes classified under the title of social realism, and a basic plot that offers much discussion, I'll talk about it for days and write a long, healthy review of the film. When I don't enjoy a film of the mumblecore movement, I'll struggle for sometimes over an hour trying to summarize why I didn't enjoy it. Films like these rely so heavily on character and realism that not liking the film likely means that you didn't like the characters for some reasons.Your tolerance for simplicity, tone, and character needs to be relatively high or the film is likely to escape you. Computer Chess escaped me early on and neither I nor it every reconnected.

The story concerns a computer chess tournament circa 1980's, when the home-computer/computer revolution was jut gaining momentum. People were in awe at the fact that a person can play a machine in a game like chess and have a chance at losing. The power of a machine shaped like a large box was greatly underestimated and tournaments for computer chess and other basic video games became relatively common. The picture is aesthetically complete, showing the players as probably how they were. Many of them wore button-down shirts, vests over their shirt, pocket-protectors, thick-rimmed glasses, had neatly combed hair and a fine-trimmed mustache, along with the benefits of khaki pants and their brain power.

Long story short, they were geeky, but they also were the reason why computers advanced so much in such a relatively short period of time. One look into the history books - or this film, in particular - and you see their equipment was clunky, slow, and unreliable. If they wanted better materials, they couldn't utilize the internet to their advantage. All they could do was do what they could with what they had, and they became the technical pioneers of a larger-than-life industry that many of us take for granted today.

Writer/director Bujalski does a nice job on the environment and the atmosphere of the picture, making the entire project have the look and possibly the aroma of a 1980's chess tournament. The computer and software equipment they had defines the very principles of primitive technology, and Bujalski shows this by incorporating memorable computer sounds of the time, along with the believable execution of an early computerized chess tournament. The black and white photography the film bears only emphasizes this quality. It also helps a film with weak or uninteresting material to make up for it in the aesthetic department, but unfortunately, Computer Chess can't entirely rebound.

Reviews of Computer Chess have marveled at the existential value of the picture. Most everyone has hailed the set design and the aesthetic work (my sole attraction before and after watching the film). And some claim that there's a great meditative style to the picture that offers a valuable viewing. I was free of almost everything in that vicinity watching the film. Bujalski's commitment to recreating an odd, specific time-frame in history deserves significant recognition, but the story he concocts around alienating characters leaves a lot to be desired. When admiration for the history subsides and fascination with aesthetics simmers, what you have is another film with a tiresome story. Like peeling away at the unique looks of a human being to find we're the same on the inside; that's never any fun.

Starring: Kriss Schludermann, Tom Fletcher, and Wiley Wiggins. Directed by: Andrew Bujalski.