Newsday, NY
Dec 3 2004
Movie Review
Game Over: Kasparov vs. the Machine
BY JOHN ANDERSON
STAFF WRITER
(U). Hitchcockian re- examination of the 1997 chess match between
grandmaster Gary Kasparov and IBM computer Deep Blue. Written and
directed by Vikram Jayanti. 1:24. At Cinema Village, Manhattan
Shot, edited and scored like a psychological thriller – which is
precisely what it is – Vikram Jayanti’s “Game Over: Kasparov vs. the
Machine” is the “Gaslight” of the chessboard. Was Kasparov just a
frustrated genius? Or the victim of an elaborate corporate scam?
Either way, the story behind the Kasparov-Deep Blue match of 1997 –
he beat the computer in ’96 – should be seen as a tribute to the
pugnacious grandmaster, generally acknowledged as both the greatest
who ever played the game, and a perpetual outsider: That he was an
Armenian Jew playing a Russian-dominated game made his rival, Anatoly
Karpov, the establishment favorite during their glory days under
Soviet chess. Or so Kasparov thinks. Of course, he also thinks IBM
rigged the match between its computer and himself. And Jayanti’s
investigation makes a good case that it did.
In order to beat the reigning champ, it took a team of programmers,
years of research and a roster of consulting grandmasters. But did
they actually succeed? As Jayanti tells it – while also making
world-class chess not only digestible but appetizing for the average
viewer – it was in Game 2 of the match in New York that Deep Blue
suddenly ignored a Kasparov ploy and played like a human.
That IBM’s stock jumped 15 percent after the match – and that the
company refused a rematch – doesn’t help its case. Neither does
Jayanti’s use of Raymond Bernard’s 1927 silent “The Chess Player,” in
which a mysterious chess machine is found to have a human operator.
That IBM’s Dr. Murray Campbell can’t seem to get the back panel off
the retired Deep Blue for Jayanti’s camera probably is just a
coincidence. But the film is shot in such eerie, suggestive fashion,
the viewer can become susceptible to Kasparovian paranoia.