Did You Know We Live in the Future?: Andrew Bujalski’s COMPUTER CHESS
How many screens have you looked at in the last hour? How many times did you touch a touchpad? So far today, how frequently did you engage machine intelligence? Did you consult Siri? Alexa? Did you use a GPS? Did you heed the recommendations of the Netflix algorithm? Or, for that matter, a dating app?
Perhaps you remember the pre-digital era. Did you ever imagine that technology would become such a casual presence, yet so crucial to our hour-to-hour experience? Certainly, the world has changed since the dawn of the computer age. Have we — as a society, a species, as souls — changed too? If so, are these changes sinister or triumphant?
These are a few of the questions taken up by Andrew Bujalski’s 2013 feature Computer Chess, a film that manages the improbable feat of being both genuinely profound and deeply funny. The film takes place during the early 1980s at a modest hotel, where a host of computer programmers have gathered to pit their chess playing programs against one another. The winning application will be awarded the opportunity to play against a flesh-and-blood chess Grandmaster (Gerald Peary), who declares “Many years ago I made a public wager that no computer would beat me until 1984, and that date is quickly coming up. Will I win my bet?”
That the film is, in fact, a work of fiction is not immediately apparent. It’s initially presented as a low-budget document of a true event, opening with the Grandmaster scolding the cameraman for pointing his lens at the sun. It’s only once you catch on to the film’s dry humor and subtle symbolism that it becomes recognizable as a “mockumentary.” Indeed, Bujalski shot the film using era-appropriate, analogue tube cameras that give the images a gloriously low-fi look. The effect at first lends credibility to the documentary premise, then, over time, contributes to the movie’s mounting sense of the uncanny.
The tournament is an early harbinger of the digital revolution, perhaps too early for most of its participants to sense the full implications of their work. Nerds are not yet cool, and tech is not yet sexy. The machines are large and clunky. The styles trend toward bowlcuts, big glasses, and unfashionable facial hair.
Its characters are an eccentric crowd. There is Peter (Patrick Riester), a painfully shy grad student who hatches an increasingly strange theory as to why his lab’s computer program seems determined to lose its games. There are the mysterious pair of observers, rumored to be attached to military intelligence, who grin and cackle every time World War III is mentioned. Most memorably, there is Mike Papageorge (Myles Paige), institutionally unaffiliated and without a room reservation, who protests the limited technical horizons discussed by the other programmers. He seems to sense the transformative potential of their work. He’s the most cantankerous of the bunch, and also the most shameless, as evidenced by his pass at the tournament’s sole female participant. “I’d be willing to bet that you and I are the only ones here who’d even understand that programming has a feminine side. Anyway, I’d love to stay in your room if you have an extra bed.”
They are all seekers, of a sort. Bujalski contrasts their endeavors with those of the other group occupying the hotel, a so-called “encounters” group. Led by a smooth guru, they practice birth reenactments and bizarre exercises involving loaves of bread. The nature of their project never becomes clear. They might be engaged in a new-age spiritual quest, or merely a quirky swingers group.
As the film’s themes point toward increasingly mind-bending territory (“Is real artificial intelligence different from artificial real intelligence?”), the style of the film shifts, leaving behind its documentary conceit, incorporating elements of the fantastic and surreal. A computer demonstrates a glimmer of self-awareness. A character falls into a repetitive loop, like a living glitch. Stray cats overrun the hotel hallways.
The film is an unusual cocktail to be sure. It feels like a tech-centric This is Spinal Tap, co-written by Haruki Murakami and Philip K. Dick, inflected with the deadpan sensibility of Jim Jarmusch. But it’s not just a novelty curio. I’ve come to the conclusion that Computer Chess is a sort of science-fiction film in reverse. Instead of imagining a future to come, it gazes back to a past that foreshadows the spectacular weirdness of our present moment.
Computer Chess plays at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Thursday, April 18. The screening will be introduced by Dr. Frank Lee, Director of Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio, who will stay for a Q&A after the film.
This screening is part of the Science on Screen® program, an initiative of the Coolidge Corner Theatre with major support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The series kicks off on April 13 with a screening of Jurassic Park, featuring a live presentation by the film’s dinosaur adviser, “Dino” Don Lessem. On April 25, join us for the Deaf Short Films Program, showcasing cinema by contemporary Deaf artists, hosted by Melissa Draganac-Hawk of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, and featuring ASL-English interpretation. The series concludes with the gripping gymnastics documentary Over The Limit, featuring presentations by Polina Kozitskiy, coach at the Philadelphia Rhythmic Academy, and Dr. Joel Fish, Director of the Center for Sport Psychology.
See you at the movies!
— Jacob Mazer, Special Programming Manager, BMFI
