RUMBLE FISH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Coppola B & W gang pic looks GREAT on Criterion, & Torontonians can see it on a big screen at the "Neon Dreams" series at The Royal Cinema.

"How do you know when someone's crazy?"

Rumble Fish (1983)
Dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Scr. S. E. Hinton and Coppola
Starring: Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Dennis Hopper, Nicholas Cage, Diane Lane,
Diana Scarwid, Vincent Spano, Tom Waits, Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne,
Tracey Walter, William Smith, Glenn Withrow, Sofia Coppola

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Time passes. Oh, does time pass. Benny (Tom Waits) knows all too well. God knows how long he's been presiding over his Tulsa, Oklahoma billiard parlour and serving (only God knows, how many teenagers); some good, some bad, some from the wrong side of the tracks, some from tony, leafy neighbourhoods of manicured lawns, some who go to public schools, some who go to private schools - but, all of them, young.

They won't be that way for long - young, that is.

Benny knows.

"Time is a funny thing," Benny mutters to nobody in particular, the ancient clock on his wall: framed with neon, ticking, attached to a perpetual flipping/clicking mechanical contraption advertising local businesses. "Time is a very peculiar item," he continues, aimlessly wiping the soda counter with a dirty rag. "You see, when you're young, when you're a kid, you got time. You got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years here, a couple of years there... it doesn't matter."

Like all glorified soda-jerks long past their prime (if they ever had a prime), Benny is a philosopher. "You know," he observes, "the older you get you say, 'Jesus, how much have I got? Me, I've got thirty-five summers left.' Think about it. Thirty-five summers."

Yeah. Benny knows.

The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) knows too. He's been gone a long time. All that's left of him in Tulsa are memories of the old days, memories of when gangs ruled the streets, memories spray-painted on street signs, cement underpasses and brick walls of abandoned, decrepit warehouses - all in corners of the city forgotten by everyone except homeless puking alcoholics and the kids looking for places to rumble, away from the prying eyes of cops - emblazoned with the present-tense words: "The Motorcycle Boy Reigns".

He reigns no more. Like the title of S. E. Hinton's second novel (resting twixt "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish") declared: "That was Then. This is Now." And then is when The Motorcycle Boy left Tulsa, like so much dust in the wind. He hightailed it on his hog to California.

They say a young man should "go west". He did. He wanted to see the ocean. He never did. "California got in the way," he muses to his little brother Rusty James (Matt Dillon) upon his surprise return to the city in which he's been immortalized by the youth devoted to aimlessness and violence.

And yes, things do tend to get in the way, but only if you let them.

And time, oh that lover who woos us with infidelity, it rushes by - the sun rises, the sun sets, the glorious cumulonimbus clouds of Oklahoma blitz across the big skies. We, like the film's characters, live in moments so significant, yet so fleeting.

Rumble Fish might be one of Francis Ford Coppola's best films. That's saying something; the dude directed The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now. He also directed The Outsiders, which, like Rumble Fish, was based on the bestselling young adult novel by the aforementioned Hinton.

The Outsiders was a big hit at the box office, especially with kids. Coppola's bold mise-en-scene appropriated, quite liberally, from the technicolor-dappled epics of yore - notably Gone With The Wind, David O. Selznick's astounding film adaptation of the novel which The Outsiders' characters are strangely obsessed with (in spite of being teenage "greasers"). Coppola was really taken with Hinton's books and in the novel "Rumble Fish" he recognized material that could be taken in much darker and decidedly different directions. Warner Brothers (the studio backing The Outsiders) had no interest in Coppola's vision for a film adaptation of "Rumble Fish" and they were especially filled with trepidation over Coppola's desire to have the productions overlap. He did what he usually did - the dude is a maverick - and so he set-up Rumble Fish with another studio, Universal Pictures.

Watching the two pictures together is pretty interesting and a lot of fun, but it's also obvious that the former is vastly inferior to the latter. (That said, where the first film connected with its intended audience, the second film was a big box office flop.)

The first-third of Rumble Fish has a relatively simple narrative exterior. Rusty James is the alpha in a group of pals that includes the smartly-dressed (in a gorgeous "Wild Deuces" club jacket from the 50s) Smokey (Nicholas Cage, in his first major screen role), beefy strong-arm muscle (fibrous between the ears as well as his bulging biceps) B.J. (the late Chris Penn, Sean's younger brother) and bespectacled, white-shirt-attired bookworm Steve (Vincent Spano). The boys are lolly-gagging around Benny's Billiards when the mysterious, snazzily-dressed African-American "Angel of Death" figure Midget (Laurence Fishburne) sashays in to deliver a message that Rusty's hated rival Biff Wilcox (Glenn Withrow) is looking for him. "Says he's gonna kill you, Rusty James," Midget announces with a slight musical cadence in his voice. Rusty James takes aim on the billiards table. "Sayin' ain't doing," he responds.

It's set. Rusty James is going to square-off against Biff Wilcox later that same evening. He and his boys swagger through the streets of Tulsa until Rusty James checks out to visit with his girlfriend, the gorgeous Catholic High School girl Patty (Diana Lane). She's clearly in a whole different league, but she is unable to resist the rough, tough manly charms of this wife-beater-shirt-attired thug with his forehead-wrapped bandana and a smoke perpetually dangling from his lips.

Ah, men in Tulsa, are surely men with a capital "M".

And yes, Rusty James is certainly all-man, especially when he faces the cackling, hopped-up, dirty-fighting Biff Wilcox, so blond and pale, the guy seems to be a veritable albino in sharp contrast to our sweaty, black-haired, olive-complexioned hero. The fight reaches a fever pitch as the lads from the rival camps cheer on their respective leaders.

However, the vicious mano a mano comes to a brief standstill with the mysterious sudden appearance of The Motorcycle Boy, stylishly smoking a cigarette on his hog, shaking his head at the sight of the tussling with an expression of bemusement and disgust. Unfortunately, Rusty James looks at his big brother just long enough for Biff Wilcox to wield a scythe-like shard of glass, slashing our hero's stomach wide open.

No matter.

You see, The Motorcycle Boy is back in town and the chortling albino is handily dispatched in a swift act of violence, so spectacularly shocking that the jaws of the assembled hit the dirt. (This is one of ace stunt-coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker's most astonishing pieces of work that the audience is pretty open-mouthed as well.)

During the middle act of Rumble Fish we're treated to a series of strange episodes involving the relationship between the brothers, their alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper) and a slow, subtle series of power shifts, all culminating in a gloriously dreamy sequence "across the river" in the Black district of Tulsa with plenty of booze-ingestion, pool-playing, wandering the lively streets (in marked contrast to the emptiness of downtown Tulsa) and all to the beat of live zydeco tunes emanating throughout the "wrong" (but clearly more buoyant and ethnically diverse) side of the "tracks".

An act of violence (perpetrated no less by White-Trash, via the wonderful Tracey Walter, the UFO-obsessed janitor in Repo Man) forces Rusty James into an out-of-body near-death experience and from here, we're set up for a third act in which certain very sad truths are revealed.

Some of the saddest truths involve the contrast between the brothers. Rusty James is a dreamer, but his dreams are petty and he's not too smart.

The Motorcycle Boy dreams too. We see him dreaming, but he's not only partially deaf and colour blind (gotta love the B/W lensing in this regard), but in spite of his obvious intelligence, he's squandered his potential and he might, he just might, be insane. Grim faced cop Officer Patterson (William Smith) not only hates The Motorcycle Boy for making the youth on his beat think gang warfare is romantic, but he's convinced the hog-riding, sport-coat-attired dream boat (who looks like he'd be more at home as a Parisian intellectual than a Tulsa greaser) is most definitely mad - batshit crazy.

Dad would disagree. Through the fog imbued in his soul by booze, the grizzled patriarch and former lawyer reduced to collecting welfare and living in a fleapit, looks proudly and yet, with deep sorrow at his eldest son.

Says Dad: "He's merely miscast in a play. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to be able to do anything that he wants to do and yet, finding nothing that he wants to do."

Dad puts the capper on this. "I mean nothing." he growls bitterly, dolefully.

The contrast between the brothers doesn't end here. Rusty James keeps imagining he can be just like his brother. "You should pray to God not," warns Dad. Our hero's friend Smokey sums it up best, though. "You might have gotten by for a while on the Motorcycle Boy's rep, but you have to be smart to run things," he states matter-of-factly. "You ain't got your brother's brains. It's nothing personal, Rusty James, but nobody would follow you into a fight because you'd get people killed - and nobody wants to be killed."

Nobody that is, except for The Motorcycle Boy. He's got a massive death wish. Rusty James, however, is all about survival. It might be sheer instinct, but he wants to live so very dearly.

Even in affairs of the heart, the brothers part company. Rusty James dreams of purity. And filth. Patty might wear her Catholic schoolgirl uniforms well, but beneath them is the lithe, supple flesh of sheer beauty. She's the ultimate symbol of the Madonna-Whore. The Motorcycle Boy's love of his life is the appropriately-named Cassandra (Diana Scarwid). Blond, beautiful, tantalizingly sexy and a teacher. Well, ex-teacher. She might love The Motorcycle Boy, but she loves heroin even more. She's a junkie - pure and simple.

Well, maybe Rusty James and The Motorcycle Boy aren't all that different in their taste in women. In their own ways, Patty and Cassandra are both Madonna-Whores. If there's a contrast, The Motorcycle Boy looks upon Cassandra with a blend of sorrow and fleeting joy as he imagines her promise. Rusty James looks upon Patty with pure lust. He even daydreams about her through the boredom of school - he imagines sexy Patty lolling about the classrooms in her bra and panties.

If the brothers share anything wholeheartedly, it's knowing they want something more than what life in Tulsa can ultimately offer. The Motorcycle Boy is obsessed with the Siamese fighting fish (the literal Rumble Fish of the title) that live in separate tanks in the local pet store. The fish can see each other through the glass (they're one of the few things we can see in colour), but it's the glass that keeps them from killing each other.

But maybe, the older brother thinks, just maybe they could live in peace if they were free. But who's going to set them free? Who's going to set The Motorcycle Boy free? And most importantly, who's going to set Rusty James free?

Maybe both of the brothers have to find ways, respectively and on their own, to set themselves free.

The first time I saw Rumble Fish in 1983, I was a huge fan of it. Over the 30+ years since that time, it stayed with me, obsessed me and beckoned me to revisit it. My most recent helping on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray was not only a dazzling experience, but I fell in love with the picture all over again. The monochrome cinematography by Stephen H. Burum with its lovely fine-grain and brilliant use of short-lenses (skewing all the long shots and making the close-ups resonate with literal in-your-face intimacy), Stewart (drummer from "The Police") Copeland's oddball percussive score with its blend of reggae influences, classical acoustic splendour, rock styling and some truly ear-caressing (alternating with ear-shattering) sound design by mixer Richard Beggs, the expert slicing and dicing of picture and sound (always bold, but still elegant and ALWAYS serving the story and tone) and last, but certainly not least, the morphing of grit, grotesqueries and old-school refinement in the production design of Dean (Little Big Man, Farewell My Lovely, The Brinks Job, all the Godfathers, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation) Tavoularis.

This is a film like no other. Yes, it hits plenty of familiar beats, but it hits them with a multitude of sticks, hammers and two-by-fours. We never quite know where we are, nor do we even fully comprehend when the film is set. It seems so long-and-ago-and-far-away and yet so urgently vital and contemporary. Sometimes it feels like only yesterday and at others like now, in the moment of all our lives, and yet at others, it feels timeless. Rumble Fish can only exist, on film and as a film.

We know it's a film, but even though we're aware of the medium and the craft and the supreme artistry, why does it so often feel like we're looking into a mirror? Probably because it takes chances and revels in the sheer joy of making movies and telling stories with pictures. The style gives us gooseflesh, and yet not a single moment feels self indulgent. It's as if Coppola is using all his love for the medium, every tool at his disposal to rub our noses in terrible truths via fabled delirium.

To watch Rumble Fish is to watch a dream unfold - a mad, no-holds barred expressionistic tale of loyalty, family, madness, coming-of-age and violence - a mythical, phantasmagoric kaleidoscope of sheer aplomb. Yes, we feel, see and hear its director. Thank God! He's a great filmmaker here - never afraid to push aesthetic, cinematic boundaries, but what we experience, really experience, what we feel, oh do we feel, is the rush of time - the inevitability of time ending and the need to make every moment of our time on this earth count, really count.

Rusty James learns the hard way that it's all going to be over before we know it.

And bless Francis Ford Coppola for this picture. He makes us learn it too. And he does so by appropriating (mostly from Murnau, Pabst and Lang) with glorious, unashamed abandon and makes it all his own.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Rumble Fish is a Director Approved edition on the Criterion Collection and includes a new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Stephen H. Burum and approved by director Francis Ford Coppola, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray, an alternate remastered 5.1 surround soundtrack, presented in DTS-HD Master Audio, an audio commentary with Coppola, new interviews with Coppola, S. E. Hinton, Roman Coppola, Matt Dillon and Diane Lane, a new conversation between Burum and production designer Dean Tavoularis, pieces from 2005 about the film’s score and production, interviews from 1983 with Dillon, Lane, Vincent Spano and producer Doug Claybourne, a 1984 French TV interview with Mickey Rourke, "Locations: Looking for Rusty James", a 2013 documentary by Alberto Fuguet about the impact of Rumble Fish, a new piece about the film’s existentialist elements, “Don’t Box Me In” music video, Deleted scenes with a new introduction by Coppola, a trailer, an essay by Glenn Kenny and gorgeous new cover art by Michael Boland.

In Toronto, the film can be seen Friday, May 19, 2017 on a big screen during the wonderful "Neon Dreams" series sponsored by Hollywood Suite and replete with a terrific pre-show presentation beginning one hour prior to the 8:00 p.m. showtime at the best independent theatre in Canada, the Royal Cinema.

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lurid Crime: Glorious Criterion

The Honeymoon Killers (1969)
Dir. Leonard Kastle
Starring: Shirley Stoler, Tony Lo Bianco, Doris Roberts,
Dortha Duckworth, Marilyn Chris, Barbara Cason,
Mary Jane Higby, Kip McArdle, Mary Breen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Though one wishes to imagine the movie Martin Scorsese might have made from Leonard Kastle's screenplay of The Honeymoon Killers, it's probably best left unimagined. Scorsese was quickly fired by the producer for being too pokey on the shoestring $150K budget, whereupon Kastle was selected to replace him.

What remains is still one of the most mouthwateringly lurid films of the 20th century. Not that Kastle's approach to this take on the true-crime drama of the "lonelyhearts killers" was exploitative, but it derives its layers of scum quite honestly due to the realistic, monochrome and almost documentary-like approach to the material. Yet, in spite of the neo-realist flavour infusing the picture, Kastle also bathes the material in a perverse romanticism and we get, first and foremost, a love story - albeit one in which its lovers are psychopaths.

Spring boarding from events which originally took place during the post-war years of the 40s and setting them in the 60s when the film was shot, we're told the tale of Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler), a morbidly obese nurse from Mobile, Alabama who meets the sexy, charming conman Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco) from a lonely hearts club correspondence. Long before internet dating sites, those in need of love would write good, old fashioned love letters to each other via clubs which advertised their services in sleazy "women's" magazines and tabloid newspapers.

The flowery correspondence twixt the two leads Ray to make a trip down to Mobile from New York. Martha lives with her dementia-addled mother (Dortha Duckworth) and has only one real friend, the libidinous Bunny. Ray has come to dupe Martha into emptying her bank account, but instead, he falls madly in love with her, and she with him.

Eventually he reveals his "business" to Martha and the two of them carry on as lovers, but pose as brother and sister, which makes them an ideal team to perpetrate fraud upon lonely spinsters. In no time, however, simple fraud turns to murder and the pair begin to kill their victims. Committing murder seems to spark their libidos even more. After Martha gruesomely, brutally and repeatedly smashes a seventy year old woman's head to a pulp with a hammer, the two retire to the boudoir as Ray, hard-on raging, orders Martha to keep the lights on. "I want to make love," he coos.

Their love knows no bounds, it seems. However, the scams they're perpetrating often place Ray in positions where the "lonely hearts" are demanding sex from him. Worse yet, Ray even seems attracted to some of the women which only causes Martha to become both jealous and even more brutally murderous.

It's only a matter of time until they're caught and as in the real-life case, both of them are put to death in Sing Sing Prison's electric chairs. Kastle, as writer and director, never lets up on the romantic connection between Ray and Martha. Sacrifices are made for love and in spite of the horrific nature of their crimes, the film actually moves us during its final moments. In fact, we're moved quite deeply.

One of the interesting aspects of creating a borderline melodrama of this love is the brilliant notion to use Gustav Mahler's alternately heart-wrenching and sweetly beautiful 6th Symphony as the only score. Written by Mahler during a period of considerable strife in his marriage to Alma Mahler, the work has often been referred to as "The Death of Love" symphony. What makes it work so beautifully is that it needs to convey deep love in order to detail the death of love and used as score in The Honeymoon Killers, it carries us along with as much joyous emotion as it does with its disturbing, dissonant riffs.

There isn't a performance in the film that ever seems out of place. but ultimately, it's Stoler (she played the concentration camp commandant in Lina Wertmuler's Seven Beauties) and Lo Bianco (oft cast as a gangster and cop who transcended the cliches he was forced to inhabit and delivered the brilliantly complex performance in Larry Cohen's God Told Me To) who both keep our eyes glued to the screen. In another time and place, these two render performances that would at least have garnered major nominations and possibly even awards, but in 1969, were relegated to a few decent critical notices and little else.

There have, of course, been a number of film versions of this story, but none of them have the power of Kastle's version to both horrify and move us. It's an extraordinary work and one which continues to live on as a genuine classic.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

The Honeymoon Killers is available on a gorgeously transferred Criterion Collection Blu-Ray which comes complete with an all new 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray, a detailed interview with writer-director Leonard Kastle from 2003, interviews with actors Tony Lo Bianco and Marilyn Chris and editor Stan Warnow and a genuinely great new video essay, “Dear Martha . . . ,” by writer Scott Christianson, author of "Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House". Feel free to order the film directly from the Amazon links below and contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

COMPUTER CHESS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A creepy contemporary relic of 80s exploration and paranoia comes to life in a movie that's as funny as it is creepy and unlike most anything you'll have seen (or will see).

Computer Chess (2013) ****
Dir. Andrew Bujalski
Starring: Gerald Peary, Patrick Riester, Gordon Kindlmann, Wiley Wiggins, Myles Page, Jim Lewis, Freddie Martinez, James Curry, Robin Schwartz, Chris Doubek, Cyndi Williams, Tishuan Scott

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Cos you're the joke of the neighbourhood,
why should you care if you're feeling good,
Take the long way home,
take the long way home..."
-Richard Davies, Roger Hodgson (1979)

As written and directed by Andrew Bujalski, Computer Chess is a great, visionary new picture reflecting a strangely familiar world so close we can almost touch it, yet finally feeling so long ago and far away that we have to pinch ourselves on a regular basis to prove any of it might have happened at all. Our breath is constantly snatched from within us as we bear witness to its subjects as they veer wildly between the extremes of both the mundane and the spiritual. Everything in between those two points is never what you expect it to be and the picture chooses directions that are near impossible to predict. The movie is laugh-out-loud hilarious, always compelling and might be the most aggressive expression of stylistically bold choices taken by any American film in recent memory.

It's also really creepy. The creep factor served up by Bujalski's one-of-a-kind experience creeps in (as it were), ever-so surreptitiously from a number of odd vantage points.

Weekend conferences, for example, are plenty creepy. A group of like-minded individuals descend from far-flung locales upon the neutral territory of a cut-rate hotel to share ideas, convey new inroads, engage in discourse or activities with a competitive edge and ultimately, to experience fellowship of an almost unrivalled intensity because the commingling is tightly scheduled and packed into a time frame of two or three days. The official portions of the conference take place under the flickering, pulsating glare of fluorescent lights in nondescript meeting rooms, the walls decorated with pale colours and the floors lined with wall-to-wall carpets notable only for the industrial strength fibres they've been hewn from.

This is where Bujalski's finely etched characters find themselves.

The evenings are spent in casual discourse - usually in one of the conference participant's hotel room and accompanied by copious amounts of booze, drugs and bowls of salted, mixed nuts. Sex is on the mind of some, but the potential of getting any is remote, save perhaps from hookers and/or from such unlikely sources that the mere thought of engaging in any coital gymnastics would be enough to inspire dry heaves.

One of the greatest scenes I've seen in any recent dramatic film is a lively late night discourse during an impromptu get together in a hotel room involving Carbray (James Curry) a young corporate geek feeling forced into justifying his very existence by John, a cynical older "casual" observer (brilliantly, hilariously and malevolently played by Jim Lewis) who baits him with an aggressive line of questioning. The verbal jousting is ultimately rooted in the subject of Chess and how it's being used in both computer science research and the experimental demonstrations on display.

And damned if the game of Chess - at least to me - isn't as creepy an activity as attending weekend conferences. It's a game that can only be played between two people with little to no real interaction save for that which is devoted to the quiet, heightened concentration required to move game pieces upon a board of light and dark squares. Often thought of as a thinking man's recreational activity, it involves such a single minded degree of strategizing on the part of the opponents that there can be no genuine communication, no interruption and certainly no idle chatter. Every ounce of brain matter must be used to move the pieces about in hopes of capturing the pieces of one's rival player - pieces representing Kings, Queens, Bishops, Rooks and Pawns.

The aforementioned cynic suggests that Chess is a game of war - so much so that the very use of the game at this conference might well be of interest to dark agencies like either the CIA, FBI or the Pentagon. John, the testy, curmudgeonly cynic might well be the creepiest character in the entire film. In fact, he may or may not be an operative with one of the shady agencies he brings up. He is one thing for sure - a drug dealer.

The Geek defender Carbray doesn't buy into the belief that he could possibly be engaged in activities that are exploitable as strategies of Totalitarian aggression. That said, he semi-concedes that even if his research leads to others using it to choose a darker and perhaps more militaristic path than he ever intended, his work is far too important to worry about the potentially ill-use of his efforts. Besides, Carbray reasons, if he wasn't doing the work, it might mean the Russians are doing it and might "get there" first. The cynic retorts that this is a poor argument - and one that "justifies any atrocity" - suggesting that Nazi scientists might also have used such arguments in the development of wholesale extermination techniques of "undesirables" during the Holocaust.

It is here where both men are handily shot down by an uncharacteristically and surprising interjection from someone far more stoned than anyone in the room. Freddie (Freddie Martinez), a dusky, long-haired, handsome young stoner, who appears to be the cynic's friend and partner, offers a sage retort to the entire argument. "Chess is black and white," he says emphatically. "It's not war. Chess is not war...War is Death! Hell is Pain! Chess is Victory! I'd rather play Chess than go get killed in war, get a bullet in the eye. I enjoy it. I enjoy playing it."

The cynic hands his handsome, dusky, thoughtful, philosophical and stoned young friend a joint. Time to move on. The conversation morphs into a discourse on artificial intelligence. The cynic pops some pills and heads to bed with the words, "I'm gonna let you guys figure this one out."

This particular centrepiece in the film reminded me of why I found and continue to find the game of Chess rather creepy. I remember an odd fellow from a similar time frame in the 80s. He was probably in his mid-40s at that point and my pals and I knew him to see him. We never spoke to the guy, nor he to us. We referred to him as Shakespeare since he vaguely resembled the stereotypical images of The Bard which adorned the myriad of publications in University book stores as well as various posters dotting the city for Shakespeare in the Park and the like.

By night, Shakespeare worked as a busboy in a little deli-cafe that we - for all intents and purposes - lived in. By day, he hung around the same deli-cafe, silently playing chess with an equally silent opponent. Once the game ended, his silent opponent would silently depart and Shakespeare would sit alone - in silence - reading science fiction novels until his evening bus-boy shift was to begin. Soon after the dinner rush ended, a new opponent entered. He'd sit there the whole evening - silently playing chess with Shakespeare - who'd silently make his moves on the chess board between table-bussing activities.

At one point, not even being aware of how much time my slacker friends and I were planted idly in this same deli-cafe, I detailed the aforementioned routine to one of my more, shall we say, cynical pals. His response was a straight-faced: "It's a quality life!" I guffawed uproariously. When my laughs subsided, I caught my breath and realized that my mirth had mutated into a thorough chilling to the bone.

I began to repeatedly experience this feeling all over again as I watched Computer Chess, this strange, murky and dazzlingly original film. Bujalski allows us to be flies on the wall while several teams of scientists, researchers and academics - computer AND chess geeks all - engage in a collegial cage match to determine which one of them has designed the ultimate computer chess-playing program. The stakes are high. Fuelling the various geeks is a generous cash prize along with a sense of manly (and academic) pride that might eventually translate into added funding for future research and development.

At the same time, my personal queasiness with respect to weekend conferences, chess and the aforementioned tale of Shakespeare the Busboy correspond directly to the deft intelligence of Bujalski's film and most of all, its true power. Much of our experience on this planet is akin to looking in a mirror. Sometimes, we like what we see, but more often than not - no matter what our ultimate worth is in terms of contributions to the world and those around us - we don't care to recognize ourselves in images that bear a clear resemblance on many levels, but at the same time make us wish they were different. The movie is like looking into a mirror - we laugh heartily, not at the characters, but with them. It's the recognition factor that cements Bujalski's film on a fairly lofty pedestal of excellence and potentially, some kind of greatness.

There are surface and stylistic details that add to the recognition factor. First of all, the film is shot in black and white analogue video on an actual camera from the dawn of home movie video in the early 1980s, the time frame in which the film is set. Everything is framed in the standard aspect ratio of 4:3 (or in theatrical terms 1:1:33) which is, essentially a box-like frame. Not that I have a problem with this ratio at all.

In theatrical terms I actually miss the qualities of composition that many filmmakers - William Wyler, George Stevens, John Ford and even Stanley Kubrick, for example, were able to achieve with standard frame. Rather than widescreen rectangular vistas of 1:1:85 or 1:1:35 (the current TV equivalent being 16:9), we'd get a much greater sense - particularly in interiors of things like the height of staircases in relation to the rest of a room (Wyler), the variety of images that could blend into each other in dissolves (Stevens), the painterly quality of human figures against the limitless heavenly skies (Ford) and the sheer height of ceilings in vast spaces (Kubrick).

Bujalski's shots - mostly interiors - are magnificently composed in this aspect ratio. The sheer softness of the image within the box-like frame is like some terrible beauty unfolding before us. At first, we think we're in a documentary, but for many film geeks, the first appearance of the legendary author, film critic, film professor and documentary filmmaker Gerald Peary in the role of a bookish, though delightfully sexy and curmudgeonly appealing academic conference moderator, is both a pleasant surprise, but also a tip-off that we're in mockumentary territory. For those who don't recognize Peary, another tip-off occurs that takes us into territory of another kind altogether. Once Bujalski turns the camera operator into an onscreen character with his camera in hand, the point of view continues in the same vein as before. Someone is not only observing the action, but creepily photographing it, and it's almost always not our onscreen character, the camera guy.

This is not a documentary, nor is it a mockumentary. We're in the territory of a dramatic film and while I hesitate to suggest we're in the horrific "meta" territory, Bujalski boldly tosses some added visual frissons that remind us that we are indeed watching a movie, but does so in ways that are integral to both narrative and thematic aspects of the film. When a truth is being exposed, Bujalski shifts to a negative reversal image, when a conversation framed in a simple medium two shot shifts into seemingly dangerous territory, he slams us into a split screen and among other brave, bold choices, he even allows one scene wherein the black and white drain from the image into full, garish 80s video colour.

The camera or, rather, point of view, becomes as relevant a character as those appearing onscreen. Given the science fiction elements of the story in terms of exploring the potentialities of artificial intelligence, Bujalski manages to inject a state of paranoia into the proceedings. WE are not the camera. That would have been the easy way to proceed and frankly wouldn't have delivered a movie as richly layered as this one. At certain points it becomes very clear that the point of view is being manipulated by someone. Who or what this operator represents instils even more paranoia.

Paranoia, of course, makes perfect sense within the context of the world Bujalski presents. First of all, we're in the 1980s - the North American reality of Reaganonimcs, Rompin' Ronnie's nutty "Star Wars" explorations into new forms of defence and warfare, a resurgence in survivalism, even chillier Cold War relations between East and West and the weight of the previous decades of the strife tearing the world apart (Vietnam, the riots, the assassinations of beloved politicians and public figures, etc.).

In terms of American cinema in relation to the period Bujalski has set his film in, one is reminded of two important works by Philip Kaufman: his end of decade 1978 remake of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers which replaced 50s hysteria with late 70s paranoia and his monumental 1983 epic of the American space program The Right Stuff which placed emphasis on individuality within the context of larger, perhaps even more insidious New World Order desires. Among a handful of others, Kaufman's two films present as fine a portrait of those times actually made in those times. One can believe that Computer Chess is as much product of the 80s as Kaufman's work was.

The sense of scientific exploration within the digital world of computers is very much tied in with this period of history. The big box-like computers were, at this point in time, early forerunners to the nano-technology that allowed them to be easily transportable. In our current day of powerbooks, notebooks, net books and iPads, these agent behemoths looks cumbersome, but at the time they represented the very exciting portability of new computers. And each night, while a clutch of participants find themselves in Bacchanalian revelry (which, for computer and chess geeks amounts to sitting around in hotel rooms), an equal number are exploring their programs to implement the results and discoveries of the day into perfecting their work.

One such young man is Peter (Patrick Riester), a teaching assistant to Dr. Schoesser (Gordon Kindlmann) an esteemed academic and a junior programming partner to Beuscher (Wiley Wiggins) a senior project leader who is, in actuality, a Psychology professor. Their program during the competition is fraught with glitches and seems to almost be giving up. The T.A. is chastised and scrutinized by his highly regarded overseer, yet clearly it's the pupil who's more on the ball than his teacher. Peter is obsessed with finding an answer to the mystery of why the computer is "committing suicide" and Schoesser patronizingly suggests that such an act is impossible in a computer as it's not human and is merely working on the basis of code that's been written.

The divide between "old" and "new" is clear in an earlier scene when Peter is in the professor's hotel room and looks at various articles of domesticity whilst Schoesser's persnickety wife is burping her baby and whispering to her hubby in low tones. Hubby approaches Peter and, obviously on the wife's orders, asks him to please use the bathroom to wash his hands. Later on, as the two men are going over the computer glitches, the professor is agog that Peter is able to withstand all-night hacking sessions. Well of course Peter would be committed to working, if need be, 24/7. Schoesser's priorities are bourgeois to say the least. "Look, I've got to get back to my wife and child," he says - as if Peter (and by extension, the audience) is supposed to applaud the priorities of familial complacency over those of discovery at any and all costs.

With the help of a young female computer geek (Robin Schwartz), the T.A. believes he's made an obvious, but extremely phenomenal discovery - one that ties in with the notion of artificial intelligence. The woman, by the way, is one of the few non-males in the world of the film who isn't a hooker, desk clerk or a horny, dumpy, swinging housewife. Much is made, as per the period, of her being the first woman involved in the conference and computer programming in general. It's a breath of fresh air in a world dominated by pathetic male geeks - who, as it turns out, aren't as pathetic as their stereotype suggests anyway - especially in the case of the younger men.

Peter's discovery, for example, is perfectly in keeping with the youthful ideals of the younger programmers. As such, Schoesser is - to be blunt - an asshole and dumps on the young man for basing his theory on limited data and not properly applying the scientific principles of experimentation. Schoesser terms Peter's theory as "outlandish". Peter, on the other hand prefers using the word "unconventional" to describe it which frankly seems far more appropriate.

People like Schoesser in virtually every power position anywhere in the world during most periods of history are little more than unimaginative pencil pushers. Peter tries to explain his enthusiasm by bringing up the brilliant Nikola Tesla (who, by the time frame in which Bujalski's story takes place had fallen very much out of the establishment scientific community's favour). "I do not think that Tesla is a good role model for your academic career," Schoesser snipes before lowering his voice with straight-faced portent: "That is the path to madness."

One wants to punch this loser in the face at this point of the story. Tesla, of course, almost never slept more than a couple of hours each night - pulling like Peter, endless over-nighters. Schoesser, like most glorified bureaucrats is not the kind of guy who's ever going to invent or discover anything truly great without stealing it from someone more talented than he. He has his priorities - a good night's sleep, a big breakfast and his stupid family.

Later in the film, Beuscher, the senior project leader even confirms to Peter something the good Professor has only the vaguest notion of and it indeed ties in with Peter's theory and worse, Schoesser's working on a nefarious deal to profit from it.

As per usual, nests are feathered by the real losers. In this case, the prospects of the research falling into the wrong hands are absolutely chilling - and yet another reason why Computer Chess springs well beyond its "meta" dabbling and satirical edge. I reiterate - the picture is downright creepy.

Another odd nest-feathering type amongst the motley assortment of programmers is the very funny Mike Papageorge (Myles Paige), a purported independent who eschews all the corporate-and-academic-institute-styled teamwork. He sees himself as a maverick and far above all the others. He's a pushy chauvinist pig who keeps trying to hit on the lone female at the conference - harassing her with no class or subtlety. And of course, he holds himself so far above his colleagues at the conference that he's forgotten to do the most basic thing one needs to do when attending such events. He's not booked a room for himself at the hotel and spends the whole weekend in search of places to crash - stairwells, lobby couches, hallways, other peoples' rooms and finally, under a table in the meeting room where he encounters the other group of geeks in the hotel.

Yes, there are two conferences going on at once. The other involves a group of individuals led by a charismatic Rasputin-like figure (Tishuan Scott). What he's up to with his charges is perhaps best left for an audience to slowly discover and get to know on their own, save for the following details - the other conference begins with everyone feeling up loaves of bread like doughy vulvas. There will, however, potentially be some offerings of solace, salvation and sex from the members of this swingin' cult concurrently doin' their 'thang in the hotel.

Doin' one's 'thang is ultimately what life's all about, but in the world of Bujalski's brilliantly subversive Computer Chess, the real question is this: Are we prepared for a time when a computer will be able to do its own 'thang?

In life and great art, there are never easy answers.

"Computer Chess" is in theatrical release via FilmsWeLike and currently playing in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. To experience the exquisite beauty of analogue ugliness, one must TRULY see the film on a big screen.