Computer Chess. (15.)
Directed by Andrew Bujalski.
Starring Wiley Wiggins, Myles Paige, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary, Patrick Riester and Gordon Kindlmann. Black and white. 92 mins.
If you had a Masters Of Cinema series which directors would you put in it? Kubrick, Ozu, Fellini, that crowd? Well Eureka! have decided that Andrew Bujalski, a driving force in the US Indie Mumbles scene deserves that accolade. I’d say he was more suited for The Quite Good at Cinema imprint but there are definitely times in his beguiling and elusive latest film when you think the Eureka crowd may be onto something.
This film set at a computer chess tournament around the turn of the eighties is pretty much a one off, not quite like anything you’ve seen before. It has moments that make you think of Richard Linklater or the more esoteric Altman pictures but most of all it resembles an episode of the Open University. It is shot in the cheapest, nastiest black and white you can imagine and is full of incompressible jargon filled dialogue delivered by bearded men with few social skills.
It looks cheaper than cheap, but you can tell a lot of effort went into getting all the period detail just right: it may take a minute or two at the start to realise that the film has actually started and you are not watching archive footage. Over a four day weekend, various characters wheel around their cumbersome computer to compete in a tournament where the prize is the opportunity to take on a human grand master, but much more is at stake.
The promotional material pushes it as a comedy and quotes critics calling it “hilarious.” In truth it’s more smiling-on-the-inside funny than laugh out loud, but not in a cop out sense. You may only find yourself smiling but it is a warm and very satisfying smile. The characters all seem to be basic comic archetypes – virginal nerds, conspiracy theorist, one who looks like a grown up Napoleon Dynamite – but Bujalski never invites them to interact in the expected way.
It is such a potent moment in time. This was when computer nerds were still outsiders and nobody was celebrating nerd chic. For all their furtive big talk about the defence applications none of them know quite how momentous the ramifications of their programming will be, or how bright their futures potentially are. The digital age is being created in a featureless motel at an event with all the glamour and thrust of a farm machinery sales convention.
Directed by Andrew Bujalski.
Starring Wiley Wiggins, Myles Paige, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary, Patrick Riester and Gordon Kindlmann. Black and white. 92 mins.
If you had a Masters Of Cinema series which directors would you put in it? Kubrick, Ozu, Fellini, that crowd? Well Eureka! have decided that Andrew Bujalski, a driving force in the US Indie Mumbles scene deserves that accolade. I’d say he was more suited for The Quite Good at Cinema imprint but there are definitely times in his beguiling and elusive latest film when you think the Eureka crowd may be onto something.
This film set at a computer chess tournament around the turn of the eighties is pretty much a one off, not quite like anything you’ve seen before. It has moments that make you think of Richard Linklater or the more esoteric Altman pictures but most of all it resembles an episode of the Open University. It is shot in the cheapest, nastiest black and white you can imagine and is full of incompressible jargon filled dialogue delivered by bearded men with few social skills.
It looks cheaper than cheap, but you can tell a lot of effort went into getting all the period detail just right: it may take a minute or two at the start to realise that the film has actually started and you are not watching archive footage. Over a four day weekend, various characters wheel around their cumbersome computer to compete in a tournament where the prize is the opportunity to take on a human grand master, but much more is at stake.
The promotional material pushes it as a comedy and quotes critics calling it “hilarious.” In truth it’s more smiling-on-the-inside funny than laugh out loud, but not in a cop out sense. You may only find yourself smiling but it is a warm and very satisfying smile. The characters all seem to be basic comic archetypes – virginal nerds, conspiracy theorist, one who looks like a grown up Napoleon Dynamite – but Bujalski never invites them to interact in the expected way.
It is such a potent moment in time. This was when computer nerds were still outsiders and nobody was celebrating nerd chic. For all their furtive big talk about the defence applications none of them know quite how momentous the ramifications of their programming will be, or how bright their futures potentially are. The digital age is being created in a featureless motel at an event with all the glamour and thrust of a farm machinery sales convention.
