LIFF27: Computer Chess Review

rating: 2

Reviewed as part of the 27th Leeds International Film Festival (6-21 Nov, 2013) It is no coincidence that, for a film concerned with the consequences of pitching man against machine, Computer Chess tries to outsmart its audience from the outset. Its most immediate trick is in posing to be a found-footage documentary; precisely how you'd imagine an early '80s chess convention held in a blandly anonymous US hotel would look. Indeed, the effort with which this illusion is maintained is certainly commendable; everything from the technical jargon to the period setting strives towards authenticity. You might have your suspicions when our cameraman, shooting on a '67 black- and-white Sony Portapak, somehow appears in the frame - but by then the game is already up. Rather uniquely, the competitors are all chess software programmers pitting their computers against each other for a weekend tournament, vying for both the prize money and, more importantly, posterity. To much fanfare, the winning program will then go on to challenge grandmaster Pat Henderson (Gerald Peary), thus settling the dispute once and for all. But while some spectators await a technological breakthrough, others murmur darkly about ''World War Three'' ( the reference to the upcoming year 1984 will be lost on no one) and it is this ominous air - as though man should not be meddling with his future- that the event, and the film, can never quite shoo away. Having made his name with such mumblecore comedies as Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation and Beeswax, writer/director Andrew Bujalski convincingly captures a bygone era, where computers were colossal, clunky things and nerds were easily identified by their thick- rimmed glasses and buttoned-up shirts. But listening to tech enthusiasts constantly question the limits of human (and machine) capability doesn't sound like much of a comedy. And so, to fill in the gaps, Bujalski randomly picks from his bag of surreal sight gags and passes them off as punchlines. For example, after a lengthy discussion on the military potential of artificial intelligence, leaving a roomful of programmers pondering the moral and philosophical implications of their work, we find that the hotel has suddenly become overrun by cats. A neat metaphor for the birth of the internet, perhaps? Or just a much needed, if more than a little abstruse, spot of comic relief?

It is moments like this that make Computer Chess such a tough and tedious watch. At first, it resembles a mildly unnerving mood piece: unpredictable, disorientating, even fun. But, less than half an hour in, our smiles quickly fade and our expression is that of bored frustration.The more engaging and perplexing plot threads suddenly tail off, leaving us with conversational cul-de-sacs and just a handful of deadpan digressions (such as the above feline infestation) thrown in to keep us from dozing off. Simply put, the film loses all sense of a cohesive structure, and its humour unquestionably suffers as a result. Take, for example, the plight of the painfully shy programmer Peter Bishton (Patrick Reister). Perhaps the closest we come to a protagonist, Peter begins the film wondering just why his TSAR 3.0 program is continuously making poor moves- in his words ''committing suicide''- prompting concerns that it has become sentient. But before he has time to address the issue, he is dragged into the room of a couple who have checked in for what appears to be a therapy session/swingers party- a joke that doesn't quite belong in this sort of film.

Our strongest -and strangest- character is the eccentric cheapskate Michael Papageorge (Myles Paige). Rather than pay for a room, he immediately sets about asking his rivals if he can crash with them, starting, naturally, with Shelly Flintic (Robin Schwartz), the only woman in attendance. It isn't long before he's back out in the corridors, forced to sleep in the first corner he can find. Later, in one of the film's more intriguing scenes (and, incidentally, the only one shot in colour), we find Papageorge visiting his mother's house when he becomes inexplicably caught in a loop similar to an endgame glitch one of the programmers had mentioned earlier. Here the film leans more towards a Lynchian horror, suggesting that the battle lines between man and machine have been blurred. Indeed, if we are to believe the brief reveal in the film's final shot, this may have already happened...

Dense, divisive and difficult to categorise, Computer Chess could have been a cult comedy classic; a Napoleon Dynamite for tech nerds. Instead, despite its original premise and rare flashes of brilliance, it is disappointingly dull. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnoHSnJsy6Q