Computer Chess

Dir: Andrew Bujalski

2013

***

Writer and director Andrew Bujalski has a very distinct and individual sense of humour. His 2013 film comedy is a fake documentary that is set at a fictional computerized chess convention in the early 1980s, in a hotel, somewhere in California. Bujalski used very few actors, choosing instead to cast real life computer nerds (with plenty of computer knowledge) to play the main characters. The dialogue is mainly improvised, the actual script being only eight pages long. It's extremely convincing throughout and at times I had to remind myself that it wasn't actually real and I kind of wish I hadn't known this before viewing. I think Bujalski has achieved something quite remarkable with Computer Chess. It has a real sense of freedom about it that you don't see much of these days and it has a refreshing fluidity that is hard not to admire. It's almost revolutionary. There have been very few clever films made about the realization of artificial intelligence, this is by far the most original I've seen. The subtle exploration of the connection between spiritual discovery and cybernetic innovation is staggeringly clever, especially as it really is just a bunch of nerds talking awkwardly with one another but here lies the problem. Computer Chess is, mostly, a bunch of nerds talking awkwardly with one another. There are a few great lines here and there but it ultimately falls flat and is, at times, dreadfully boring. Maybe that was the point, and I kind of like that, but it doesn't make it any easier to watch. At times it seemed like a poor man's Napoleon Dynamite and a sad imitation of the brilliant documentary King of Kong (which I would hazard a guess was the inspiration of the film). That said, the conclusion and last scene blew my tiny mind and has had me thinking about it ever since. I applaud its originality, the methods of film making Bujalski has created and I loved the idea, it’s just that the idea is far more exciting than the finished film. I haven’t been this torn with a film since Gregg Araki’s 1997 film Nowhere.