An funny , off - kilter film , Computer Chess , has managed to pull off something that no other science fiction story ever has . With its tale of an early 1980s calculator chess tourney , it expose the terrene , lightheaded agency that a truly dangerous artificial intelligence information might emerge .
Famed indie director Andrew Bujalski has put together a collection of doer and non - histrion for what looks like something that was filmed on an former video cassette recorder . It ’s a grainy black and white document of what go on when a gang of flake get together at the dawn of the computer geezerhood to blab about the time to come and pit their chess game - act program against each other for a weekend . Several of the software developers , including the irritable tourney winner Les , are bring by genuine animation software developer ; and computer scientist Tom is play by University of Chicago computer science professor Gordon Kindlmann .
What come forth is a surprisingly realistic picture of both a time in history – the bottom end of the freewheeling seventies – and a minute in the history of ideas . Put another room , it ’s about what come about when a group of artificial intelligence operation developer wind up in the same hotel with a bunch of swingers who are examine to actualize themselves .
We pursue the action mostly from the perspective of Peter , Tom ’s pupil at Caltech , who is quietly freaking out because his team ’s software is wacky in unexpected ways . Peter almost never sing , preferring rather to interact with the command line . But actor Patrick Reister — another non - actor who commonly ferment as a film editor — has a marvelously expressive face , and manages to convey Peter ’s clumsiness , intelligence , and in the end anger as the weekend go on .
Peter wanders the hotel hallways , attend for answers , finding himself in parties where geeks are getting stone and mull over about how unreal news could end the world – and at one point even stumble into a hotel room where a hubby and wife from the “ wedlock encounter ” group seek to seduce him . As I mention earlier , the acting is incredibly naturalistic . A spate of the conversation between the scientist and self - actualizers sound just like what you really would hear if two such dissimilar group came together in a hotel league space . That said , there some geek stereotype directly out of Big Bang Theory . Peter is portray as virginal and diffident in the extreme , many of the characters are ungainly dorks , and the “ one lady ” on the MIT team , Shelly , is single out for weird attending from reasonably much everyone .
Still , there are a circle of memorable graphic symbol you would never find on TV , like crazy main software engineer Michael Papageorge , a scammer who believes he alone support the underground key to AI . And then there are the uncanny spousal relationship encounter people who keep barging into the computer cheat area to do their morning reincarnation ritual . There ’s a lot of pleasance to be had in just listening in to these geeks ’ conversation , and imagining how this unearthly , obscure event was the cradle of today ’s net culture .
But the beneficial part is watching how Peter ’s perspective change during the weekend , as he begins to reckon out why his chess political program is working so mischievously . After a strange conversation with his professor , he has a secret meeting with Shelly from the rival team where he discovers something astounding about his program . He also realizes that his professor ’s funding is actually coming from some kind of secret authorities programme . All these details – which bubble up in the backcloth as the tourney goes on – provide a dark counter - narrative to the film ’s irresistibly loopy , comedic tone .
I ’m not extend to give away what find , but serve to say this is a movie that somehow combines the preoccupations of the Terminator franchise with gentle liquid body substance and a peachy middle for historic detail . If you desire to sleep with how Skynet might really have been born , you involve to watch Computer Chess . And if you just need to hang out with some bang-up nerds who are debate the Singularity , you may come for that too .
Computer Chess is out nowas a direct download and on iTunes .
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