By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Andrew Bujalski
Starring: Gerald Peary | Gordon Kindlmann | Myles Paige | Patrick Riester | Robin Schwarts | Wiley Wiggins
Country: united_states
Year: 2013
Running time: 93
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2007360/combined
Jason says: “I think I’m done with Andrew Bujalski. I’ve seen three of his four films, and even the one I kind of liked didn’t really impress me. And while I can see some merit in the ones like COMPUTER CHESS that bore me to frustration, it’s not enough. This thing is just not clever enough to go without a story.
“Sure, it sort of looks like it has a story: In the late 1970s/early 1980s, there’s an annual convention where the developers of various chess-playing computer programs set their creations against each other round-robin style. The winner will play host and chess master Pat Henderson (Gerald Peary), although at the time, the idea that a computer could defeat a human being is ludicrous. Among the competitors are a team from MIT that includes Peter Bishton (Patrick Riester) and Tom Schoesser (Gordon Kindlmann); one from Cal Tech that includes Shelly (Robin Schwarts), the only girl in the tournament; independent operator Michael Papageorge (Myles Paige), who apparently hasn’t booked a room; and a privately funded team with Martin Beuscher (Wiley Wiggins). There’s also a sort of swingers’ group sharing the space, and…cats.
“Bujalski and his cast of what are, for the most part, non-actors (Wiggins and Paige have prior credits but have been doing other things lately) create a few memorable characters, and a great many others that run together. As is often the case, there’s a certain authenticity to their performances, especially since they are by and large editors, computer programmers, and others who can easily handle the retro-technical terms. Paige gets the most memorable character, with Papageorge just cynical and snide enough for his being thwarted to be entertaining but not quite enough to really get on the audience’s bad side. Riester’s Peter winds up drifting toward the center of the story, and he does project a likable every-nerd quality.
“Here’s the thing, though – the tournament isn’t so much an event that gives the film structure but merely bounds. There’s nothing meaningful in how it progresses or ends; it merely defines the period of time when these fairly uninteresting (though occasionally amusing) characters happen to be in the same place. The contest ends when there are still twenty or thirty minutes of movie but precious little for anybody to do. Things grind along but there’s never a particular feeling of accomplishing anything. Random elements like the cats and, well, stranger things are there to provoke a ‘that’s weird’ reaction.
“Ah, but this sort of film isn’t about plot but character, and theme. Bujalski does set up a sort of ‘it’s real human contact that matters!’ theme, both in ways that are clangingly obvious – when Peter and Shelly try and debug Peter’s chess program, they find it doesn’t respond when playing against other machines, but does with humans, so take a look at the girl beside you, kid! – and ways that are less so. The ‘encounter group’, after all, is probably no closer to finding true connections than the folks pitting machines against machines, for instance. One programmer shirks the tournament to spend time with his family, and, of course, the programs don’t stand a chance against human instinct. And while this isn’t an unworthy message at all, it’s vague and often related in stupid ways (although the idea that a chess program run on something like a Zilog Z80-based machine with about 4K of RAM can distinguish whether its opponent is man or machine and play cupid is an authentic 1980s-movie estimation of what computers could do).
“And then there’s the silly techno-fetishism that is the movie’s production. As someone who still has an Atari 800XL in my
basement ready to be hooked up at a moment’s notice, I certainly can’t complain about the unearthing of old equipment that shows up all over the place, but the choice to shoot the film on period-appropriate Portapak videotape is mostly annoying. The low-resolution analog haze it covers the image with doesn’t create a sense of warmth or nostalgia; it’s just a gimmick, one that intrudes into the narrative with cameramen using that same technology in-story so that the picture drifts between documentary/television pastiche and omniscient without the style signifying anything.
“Sure, it looks clever, and you can make it sound smart, but there’s much less there than meets the eye. Set it thirty years ago and use weird cameras, but it’s still just another movie about mumbling twenty -somethings who don’t actually do anything worth mentioning, put together with just enough skill to seem like something more. 2 cats
“Seen 27 April 2013 in The Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital).”
Chris says: “Since he never seemed comfortable being the Master of Mumblecore, it was inevitable that Andrew Bujalski would try to do something a little different. It’s fitting that rather than court a larger audience with a more accessible picture he would go in the opposite direction, but his first three features gave little indication that he’d ever make something like COMPUTER CHESS. Set in a vague early 1980s and almost entirely filmed in and around a purposely generic budget-level chain hotel next to a freeway, the film is about a three-day national ‘man vs. machine’ chess tournament where an endless succession of nerdy young-to-middle-aged males (and one token young woman) compete against each other using their now-laughably enormous,
bulky computers. Oh, and the whole thing’s shot in black-and-white pneumatic video tape of the period, which makes a Joe Swanberg film look like Terence Malick in comparison.
“In terms of the actual story, I guess it’s not too far off from the character and dialogue driven FUNNY HA HA, but the presentation seems so deliberately weird that it takes on a surreal, absurd sheen Bujalski only hinted at before. The most
memorable stretches here occur when everything suddenly (and temporarily) goes bonkers, like an empty hotel room full of stray cats, or an EST-like couples therapy session which increasingly barges in on the ‘puter chessers’ conference hall space or the silent prostitute occasionally hovering outside the lobby (whom proves to be more mysterious that you could ever imagine). In a cast of mostly non-professional, first-time actors, two stand out: Patrick Riester as Peter, a spectacularly bespectacled introvert who emerges as the film’s moral center, and film critic and professor Gerald Peary, actually quite good (or, at the very least, perfectly cast) as Henderson, the pompous competition headmaster.
“On one hand, COMPUTER CHESS is an awfully silly little exercise in recreating a long lost, justly forgotten aesthetic; on the other, Bujalski is admirably, fully committed to this aesthetic, especially in costume choices (how easily we forget how incredibly ugly that era could be), cinematography (he works within the video’s limitations without overdoing its effects) and other little details such as the computer-generated (obviously!) screen credits and at times deliberately poor sound design. Naturally, this aesthetic is not for everyone and I haven’t a clue where Bujalski will go from here. But I appreciate what he’s trying to do and sense that as an art-film director, he’s comfortable entertaining his audience, though I wonder if he knows (or cares) how profound he actually is. 4 cats
(This film screened at the 2013 Independent Film Festival of Boston)”