COMPUTER CHESS (B+) - Andrew Bujalski's format-faithful homage to the early-'80s computer craze.
AN OVERSIMPLIFICATION OF HER BEAUTY (B) - Terence Nance's ambitious modern effort that chops up both love and narrative filmmaking into a new language.
***
Andrew Bujalski doesn't make it easy to like his films. The maestro of Mumblecore often tries your patience as he takes his time getting to the point. And the first hour of "Computer Chess" can be a bit of a trudge. (He may be his own worst editor.) Here, he embarks on a nostalgia trip by dramatizing an early-'80s competition of chess programmers taking place over the course of a weekend.
It takes a while to get over Bujalski's gimmick: He has faithfully re-created the videotape quality of the era (and its graphics) to visualize a documentary-like story of the tournament in which the geekiest of the nerds take over a tacky hotel for a weekend to pit their computer programs against one another's, with the winner to take on a flesh-and-blood chess master.
I squirmed a bit while Bujalski positioned his pieces throughout a first hour marked by geek speak and existential nerd chatter. Like the other half of this double feature, the director sometimes machine-guns the viewer with dialogue, and it's difficult to keep up with the ideas or to find a long enough lull to pick up the story's thread. Dialogue gets repetitious. The no-name cast doesn't quite connect.
But then ... it all starts to click. One computer programmer discovers that his team's chess program doesn't do well against other machines but it does react properly when going up against a human making moves on the other side. It seems all of the men here stand at ground zero of the original sin of creating artificial intelligence that will surpass us one day; meantime, the computers themselves seem to be reacting intuitively to human contact. We sense a grand theme that in the end will give us a twinge of "2001: A Space Odyssey" muscle memory.
Bujalski expertly weaves in a couple of sidebars: one about a new-age couples-therapy conference that has a cult-like feel to it and which gradually invades the tournament's space, and another about a room-less tournament participant who wanders the hotel grounds like a ghost (or a conscience?), mixing with both the chess players and the couples. A shy programmer reaches out to the only female participant. One of the frisky couples picks off a vulnerable young programmer and tries to seduce him in their room, a creepy yet bittersweet scene that feels real and personal.
In the end, Bujalski's strategy pays off, and the disparate parts somehow fit together. My hunch is that the takeaway will vary from viewer to viewer, and it almost feels sacrilegious to try to articulate his ultimate point. Who survives in the end -- human or computer? That's an unsettling question. We don't know yet, do we?
***
Terence Nance wants his wide-market debut, "An Oversimplification of Her Beauty," to convince you that it's blowing your mind. It may or may not.
This is a movie about making a movie, and as such, its intense navel-gazing tags it with Strike One. Too often it feels like we're merely indulging a pretentious artist as he reads from his diary and shows off footage of gorgeous women who felt flattered enough to let him film them.
I was also unprepared for the overwhelming amount of animation involved; this is basically an animated movie with a sprinkling of live action. Strike Two. Even when you do see actual people, they rarely interact directly in dialogue. For a story about relationships, that's a little more than frustrating.
The film evolved from an earlier project, the documentary "How Would You Feel?," which chronicled his relationship (or lack thereof) with Namik Winter. Nance takes that earlier film and creates a fresh mix tape by fictionalizing the experience of shooting the first movie.
Nance uses the conceit of a nature documentary, with affectless narration (which sometimes blends into and out of his own voice as narrator). It's a welcome gimmick at first, and you expect him to drop it, so that the movie will really kick in. But, no; that voiceover recurs ad nauseam, right up until the bitter end. Strike two-and-a-half.
The script is riddled with faux academic pronouncements and purple prose, presumably for effect. Instead of saying "they lived in different cities," he says, "they resided in different municipalities." But he outsmarts himself a few times. (For example, he misuses "disinterested.") And the rapid-fire narration, which often competes with typed words pouring across the screen, is difficult to keep up with. His stream-of-consciousness thoughts and philosophical pronouncements machine-gun the viewer, who often is left not knowing whether to read or listen or try to multitask and absorb as much as possible. It's very digital 21st century. Strike two-and-three-quarters.
Yet, down deep, this is a classic boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl story. And Nance displays talents that flash across the generations. He and his film bring to mind a 20-something Spike Lee ("She's Gotta Have It"), a 40-something Woody Allen ("Annie Hall," "Manhattan") and even a 60-something Jean Luc Godard ("In Praise of Love"). There's definitely something here; I just didn't connect with it enough.
I'll admit, I'm a Gen X white guy critiquing the creative work of a Gen Y black man. Maybe it's a masterpiece. Maybe it's a cluttered, over-ambitious early work of a director to watch. Maybe it's just too early to tell.
Bonus Track
On the way home from this Guild Cinema double feature, the Wild Flag song "Endless Talk" was conveniently cued up on disc to put a little exclamation point on Nance's movie:
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