![]() The way that movies are imagined, made, seen, and discussed now depends on computers there’s a fundamental Internet-based aesthetic that prevails in modern cinema, and Bujalski’s films are a part of it. “Computer Chess” looks back at the modern era of movies in which the filmmaker has came of age. “Funny Ha Ha” depicts the difficulty in getting the gears to mesh “Mutual Appreciation,” shows a quiet struggle for a worldly identity and “ Beeswax,” from 2009-the title, after all, means business-conjures the practical complications of running a small independent-film-like business. His characters all have a dialectical fluency that is stunted by their inhibition and introversion they are unfulfilled despite intelligence and talent, and a sense of having sparked situations of major import that they can’t quite master is one of Bujalski’s constants.īujalski’s movies mirror the stages of a filmmaker’s career. His earlier movies are also filled with nerd heroes (played by Bujalski himself in his first two features, “ Funny Ha Ha,” which was made in 2002 but released in 2005, and “ Mutual Appreciation,” from 2006). ![]() Much has been made of the difference between “Computer Chess” and Bujalski’s three prior features-all of which are contemporary, not historical-but I was struck by the continuities. ![]() On viewing the film again, it seems clear that these three elements are strongly connected, and that they combine to yield a sort of intellectual self-portrait. I was also struck by its continuity with Bujalski’s three earlier features and its exploration of the inherent strangeness of a world dominated by computers, a strangeness that, today, has become utterly ordinary. When I first saw and wrote about the film, in January, that was the aspect of the movie that I emphasized. cursor and the dot-matrix printer-and even the images themselves, which Bujalski and his cinematographer, Matthias Grunsky, created with archival, analogue, vacuum-tube-based video cameras (which are even seen onscreen). The most striking thing about the movie is its amazingly detailed and precise reconstruction of the styles of the day-the haircuts, the clothing, the eyeglasses, and the furnishing the classic computer, down to the blinking C.R.T. He also learns from another member of the team that the computer had been engaging him in gnomic philosophical dialogue and hinting that it thinks it’s alive. The action is centered on the junior programmer of an academic team who begins to suspect that their computer is able to detect the difference between a computer opponent and a human one, and thus is exhibiting elements of self-consciousness. “Computer Chess” is set in and around an isolated roadside hotel, circa 1980, where computer programmers gather for a tournament that pits their chess programs against each other.
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