Fantastic Fest Review: Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest

Anders Thomas Jensen will probably watch Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest and weep. Because the Danish director's constant efforts to sympathetically portray misfits and dorks on-screen may have been eclipsed by this documentary about a man trying to break the world endurance record for playing a videogame.

I say "dorks" in the most loving way. Honestly, I have rarely seen that uncool subset of society depicted with such bracing and delightful empathy as in Mads Hedegaard's charming documentary. As a hardened (if not talented) gamer myself, of both arcades and the table top variety, there was a twinge of recognition about the little community that supports this strange endeavor. I knew guys like these in college - awkward, sometimes bombastic, at varying levels of comfort in their own skin, but ultimately always there for each other.

Gaming documentaries, especially those in the sweaty passageways of classic arcade gaming, have struggled to evade the presence of Billy Mitchell, the egotistical antagonist of Chasing Ghosts turned pure villain in The King of Kong. And while Hedegaard's cabinetside view of Kim Købke's attempt to play Gyruss for 100 hours can't evade the obligatory cameo from the controversial self-publicist, there's no doubt this is a very different story. For starters, Købke is the anti-Mitchell, a gangling, taciturn but affable guy with a soft smile, soft eyes, and a silvery mullet. He's also surrounded by friends - each talented and tonuguetied in their own way - who have pledged to help him reach his insane target. After all, four days and four hours of playing the vintage space shooter on a single coin takes a lot of planning, training, supplements, spreadsheets, and licorice.

It's not just a tough on-screen challenge, as Hedegaard makes clear in his narration: it's one that literally risks Købke's health (people have died in such endurance events). Plus, as one friend notes, at 55 he's no spring chicken, and this will be his fourth attempt at this record.

His support crew are also serious gamers, but they're also poets, music theoreticians, and, pivotally for Hedegaard's oddly contemplative retelling of Købke's marathon, theoretical physicists. Hedegaard himself is clearly the outsider but happily accepted, catching the squad in moments of surprising vulnerability but with no judgement. If anything, he's a little in awe of what they're doing, both of Købke's quiet resilience and the misfits that make up what can only be called his pit crew.

But, best of all, Cannon Arm blows the concept of misfits away. Much as Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel found joy in the world of LARPing (live action role playing) in SXSW 2007 audience favorite Darkon, Hedegaard taps into the strange optimism that pervaded popular science back when everyone was reading A Brief History of Time (and sort of understanding it). The story becomes a contemplative tribute to the mysterious power of friendship, the ubiquity of patterns, and the allure of esoteric thinking, all bathed in the warm glow of a CRT monitor.

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Cannon Arm and the Arcade Quest
US premiere
Friday, Sept. 24, 4pm at Alamo South Lamar
Available on FF@HOME Sept. 30-Oct. 11.

Fantastic Fest 2021, Sept. 23-30. Tickets and info at fantasticfest.com. Follow all our coverage at austinchronicle.com/fantasticfest.