The relatively recent debate of man versus machine comes a bit more clearly into focus in this documentary film looking back on the tense days of the 1997 chess match between grand master Garry Kasparov and the IBM computer known as Deep Blue. Seven years after Kasparov’s bitter defeat filmmaker Vikram Jayanti (The Man Who Bought Mustique) follows him roaming the empty rooms where the meetings and matches took place. As Kasparov reflects on his memory of the match, Jayanti uses news footage, interviews with the principle players, then and now, and interweaves them with theatrical images of the icons of magic and sorcery. The film builds its own tension not unlike the taut feelings of the match that captured headlines the world over and held legions of chess players and the general public in rapt attention in May 1997.

Arguably the greatest chess player that ever lived, the film provides a brief background of child chess prodigy Kasparov and his swift climb to the title of world champion. Good looking and aloof, and stifled by the rigid forum of the Soviet bureaucracy in his native Russia, after catapulting to international stardom by seizing the world title at the tender age of 22, Kasparov’s ability and confidence thrived, perhaps to the point of hubris. Being the ideal human challenger for the engineering and programming talent behind the ultramachine developed by top IBM technicians, Kasparov agreed to play the machine.

Director Jayanti enlists the façade of a mechanical wooden anachronism from a bygone century known as "The Turk" to personify Kasparov’s non-human opponent. He set the tone of an Oz-like place where things are not as they appear in the opening sequence that zeros in on a warehouse harboring a collection of the discarded accouterment of magicians tricks, trunks, theatrical masks, and ghostly whispering voices. The suggestion that IBM’s machine didn’t play fair hovers from the start. Now age 42, Kasparov retains the stoic defensiveness he displayed after losing the match, and one gets the sense he has moved on rather than truly accepted the outcome. We don’t get much real insight into his personality, but the film reveals him as a man who, by nature, lives for chess, and though he’d prefer a human rival, there is talk of a match with a super machine in the near future.

In a spectator sport with the liveliness of drying paint, visual interest is piqued by shots of cold blue glass and steel buildings, sepia toned washes and especially in clips from the 1927 silent film "The Chess Player." The match itself is what gives the film its drama and Kasparov was clearly shaken profoundly by the loss. He recalls small details of what the rooms looked like seven years previously, as if to demonstrate the competency of his brain as a central processing unit.

After winning game one of the match, he charts his own defeat as stemming from game two; repeatedly, distressingly referring to "something" that happened in that game to undermine him. He played with great difficulty for the remaining games.

He all but accused the IBM team of cheating and they in turn quickly lost the playful mood and seem to take little pleasure in the victory. Nonetheless, the entire stunt fattened the corporate bottom line by over a billion dollars. As tempted as one might be to take sides, one thing is clearly at the heart of the film: Kasparov was sporting enough, or cocky enough, or both, to take on Deep Blue and winning was deadly serious for him. By association, as humans, we’ve got to see this as courageous. By contrast, IBM enjoyed big financial gain and its dispassionate corporate persona is not nearly as interesting as Garry’s. No one is wondering seven years later how Deep Blue feels about the whole thing. As is pointed out at the conclusion, Garry lost, but Deep Blue didn’t win.