Game Over - Kasparov and the Machine, 2003

The now legendary matches between history's strongest chess player and the (then) strongest chess playing computer provide fertile grounds for some serious cogitation. Machines have long since proved faster and stronger than humans, but, until recently, it could not reasonably be feared that they might be smarter than us. Of course, for many decades now, the feats of calculation performed by digital computers have far surpassed any human's abilities, but only the narrowest definitions of intelligence would lead us to conclude that a dethroning has taken place. An intrinsic aspect of our single most important evolutionary advantage is creative thought, which we comfortably remind ourselves is outside the reaches of mere computation. Once it is understood that chess is not merely a matter of calculation, the true significance of the matches documented by "Game Over - Kasparov and the Machine" may begin to be felt. Whichever player is best at raw computation will inevitably be tactically superior; he or she (or it) will make the best moves directed at immediate goals. But bets should always be placed on the superior strategist, whose eyes will be turned toward the endgame, where the majority of chess games are won or lost. The tactician may win a piece here and there, but the strategist will dynamically, creatively, achieve a superior position. Confrontations between these two attitudes are inevitably dramatic, and when fused with the now pervasive theme of Man vs. Machine the results are bound to be breathtaking. Sadly, this documentary simply does not do justice to the topics it addresses. On the one hand, it focuses primarily on a game of chess that is never actually shown. This is understandable, however, since the nuances of such a high level game would hardly be appreciable by an audience of laypersons (or even very advanced amateurs). But, on the other hand, it stubbornly refuses to do more than passingly broach the grand philosophical issues posed by the confrontation between Kasparov and Deep Blue, IBM's chess playing computer. Both facets of this failure are made more pronounced by "Game Over"'s flaunting its intentions to delve deeper, first by its inclusion of interviews with several notorious Grandmasters and chess analysts, and second by the presence of John Searle, the eminent philosopher and cognitive scientist from Berkeley. What begins as an ambitious and promising documentary eventually collapses into less than adequate coverage of a comparatively petty squabble over IBM's conduct during the matches. This hardly journalistic foray is superficially, almost obsessively, intertwined with the story of The Turk, a 19th century contraption designed to hoax audiences into thinking a machine could defeat human chess players. Which leads me away from criticisms of substance to those of style. I would, if I could, plead with the makers of "Game Over" to seriously reconsider two editing decisions. First, while including live commentary of the matches is a benefit, that is negated by the fact that it was whispered, rendering it tortuously unintelligible when contrasted to every other piece of audio in the film. Second, though the story of the Turk is an interesting historical curiosity, no purpose is served by the inclusion of overly long black and white dramatizations of the ancient machine's exhibitions. Except, of course, padding the documentary's length at the cost of a severed slowed pace. Nonetheless, this is a movie worth watching, primarily because the events it investigates have both intrinsic and historical significance. Finally, however, "Game Over - Kasparov and the Machine" delivers one rather pleasant surprise. For a movie so centrally concerned about machines, it also showcases quintessentially human facets of the great grandmaster, Kasparov, whose near-superhuman talents represented the superiority of human ingenuity of raw computational capacity. That is, until he lost.

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