Computer Chess (Masters of Cinema’s latest release) was part-financed by Kickstarter. Now it might not sound like much but this is a momentous turn in fate, for a long time websites like Kickstarter have been an appealing means of community-led sufficiency for creative projects, but at the same time, they have been no guarantee of success or even distribution down the line. For such a globally renowned label like Eureka to pick up a title with Kickstarter in its DNA means we are passing a significant landmark. And what an unusual film Computer Chess is to mark that turn in the tide.
Directed by mumblecore alumni Andrew Bujalski, Computer Chess is an abrasively experimental film about competition in the early 1980s to see whether the software was capable of beating a Chess Grandmaster. It may flirt with fascinating territory in the birth of genuine artificial intelligence, a theme that sees the film at its most entertaining. The moment where one of the characters has a conversation with a computer is inspired. But as far as an outright narrative through-line goes this is a very sparse film, there was no traditional script; there were an 8-page treatment and a barebones outline of the structure of a scene. This is an improvised film. Understanding neither Chess nor computer programming, it stood up remarkably well to the point where it doesn’t feel like the bread and butter improv of mumblecore that Bujalski graduated from.
With no familiar actors and an archaic visual aesthetic, Computer Chess sits alongside Pablo Larrain’s No as a film that could easily be mistaken for a documentary due to the authenticity inferred by creative decisions. All of that is a longhand way of saying that this is not a film that appeals to the eye. The credits and TV-style pop-ups both borrow from Sinclair’s, Spectrums and old BBC computers. Harshly singular this all might be, but it’s a classic case of needing to look past the surface and in doing that you shall find a bold vision that marks Bujalski’s film out as a genuine original.
Defiantly nerdy and retro, Computer Chess sees Bujalski experiment freely in a concept that is as far away from mainstream sensibilities as you can get.
COMPUTER CHESS
There is more to recommend in Computer Chess than an idiosyncratic presentation, it’s also a genuinely awkward and funny comedy. Although it doesn’t work by the same rules of feed-line and punchline of a traditional comedy, that doesn’t make it any less funny. In the competition scenes, everything runs in an erratic order one would expect from a flourishing technological application like software for chess AI, it’s in the social situations where all the fun takes place.
Early on in the film, the chess grandmaster announces that ‘we have a woman now’ like she is some sort of collectable, it’s an awkward moment but a funny one that establishes the rules of the film. A woman being present is more significant than the AI, to some comedic extent. Bujalski and his players are consistently setting up imposing character traits only to undo them by emasculating them through awkward conversations and interactions. Take the therapy arc running along with the computer chess convention; it perfectly surmises what the film is striking for.
Defiantly nerdy and retro, Computer Chess sees Bujalski experiment freely in a concept that is as far away from mainstream sensibilities as you can get. In that freedom, the director has forged a genuine contrarian film that will reward the open-minded with its baffling peculiarities. Now, how to follow up a film of such a singular voice as this… that’ll be interesting to find out.
Watch Computer Chess on Amazon Prime
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