I agree with the author's criticism of the movie, but I still personally enjoyed The Imitation Game.
It's good entertainment even if it is quite exaggerated and not 100% historically accurate. If it exposes more people to some of the history of computing and one of its great early engineers then I think that is positive.
Where did you see it? Everything says it came out in November in the US but I still haven't seen it in any of the theaters in my state (even the biggest ones in all the large cities).
"“We’ll follow the pattern laid out with ‘The King’s Speech,’ ‘The Artist’ and pictures like that and move slowly and deliberately,” said Erik Lomis, distribution chief for the Weinstein Company.
[Just 4 theaters to begin with.]
"The slow but steady expansion will see “The Imitation Game” add six markets and between 25 and 30 theaters on Dec. 12. It will go nationwide in between 600 and 800 theaters on Christmas Day.”
I saw it about two weeks ago at an advanced screening.
Despite everything in the article about the inaccuracies (and they are right), I found the movie to be enjoyable and really pretty close to the real story if you consider this is all told in under two hours.
I just saw it tonight at the Shoreline Cinemark in Mountain View. Try to get the reserved seating if you can -- comfy recliner chairs (http://www.cinemark.com/luxury-loungers.aspx).
Enigma (2001) is a better film. It, too, has a gratuitous spy plot. Actually, not only were there no leaks from Bletchley Park, the secret was kept until the early 1970s, and full details didn't come out until the 1990s. Turing was a reasonably important figure at Bletchley Park, which had about 9000 people at peak. But there were lots of other smart people working on the problem. Dilley Knox was in charge of the cryptanalysis, and Gordon Welchman did much of the design on the improvements to the Polish Bombe. Welchman went on to teach the first computer course at MIT and worked on computers until the early 1970s. He overcame his early opposition to vacuum tubes; he thought they would be too unreliable.
The real secret of US and British cryptanalytic efforts was to approach it as an industrial problem. That was new. Cryptanalysis until WWII was someone at a desk with pencil and paper. Cryptanalytic units were tens of people. The WWII effort on the Allied side involved not only Bletchly Park, but a big operation at Arlington Hall in the US and another operation in Hawaii. Bombes, the electromechanical key-testers, were built by the British Tabulating Machine Company, National Cash Register, and Western Electric. (NCR's was the most useful and was produced in large quantities.) About 60,000 people were involved at peak. It wasn't clear until long after WWII how big the operation was. Few people were allowed to see more than a small part of it. This wasn't a "one lone genius" thing.
Some of the secrecy was to make Churchill look good. There were times during WWII when Churchill sent a message to a general facing heavy opposition "Press on and you will be victorious", and took historical credit for his courage and decisiveness. Decades later we find out that Churchill had info such as "14th Panzer low on fuel and ammo, cannot fight for more than 2 hours" from intercepts. All German units sent in a strength return each day (all serious armies do this) which reads like "#1, 12000, #2, 450 ..." and is simply many effective soldiers, how much ammo, and other basic numbers. It's dull, boring, and tells which units can fight effectively and how far they can move. Much of Bletchley Park's work was decrypting and tabulating that info, which told Allied commanders where the weak spots were on the German side.
I haven't seen that, but my understanding is that they cast him as straight. If so, how is it possible to get past that (rather insulting) inaccuracy?
All German units sent in a strength return each day (all serious armies do this) which reads like "#1, 12000, #2, 450 ..." and is simply many effective soldiers, how much ammo, and other basic numbers. It's dull, boring, and tells which units can fight effectively and how far they can move. Much of Bletchley Park's work was decrypting and tabulating that info, which told Allied commanders where the weak spots were on the German side.
Can't believe that there wasn't a glut of bogus strength reports floating around. ("No, Mr. Turing, your friends will find that the 14th Panzer is fully armed and operational.")
They didn't cast Turing at all, it was a historical fiction movie about a guy named Tom Jericho who sort of fills Turing's role. The historical context is mostly accurate, but it's not supposed to be a movie about Turing.
The point is that the Ultra secret was so well kept that the Germans didn't know their ciphers were broken. They had no reason to send fake strength reports.
Nothing particularly prevents disinformation from reaching your own side. The more obvious it is that a channel is "false", the less likely you are to fool the enemy, but the more "real" the channel is the more likely you are to fool yourself. A study of the history of war will show armies generally have a hard enough time inculcating themselves with cultures that will prevent them from deliberately lying to themselves as it is.
> Some of the secrecy was to make Churchill look good.
Surely the secrecy was critical to the ongoing success (if the Germans suspected they could improve their opsec if not completely change their systems)? Given that how do you instruct the general while leaking the absolute minimum about your knowledge?
Now a side effect may have been to make Churchill look good but for the duration of the war confidence in leadership would have been a generally good thing. I don't know how much Churchill played up his abilities after the war but to be honest it doesn't really worry me.
Enigma is an outstanding book, but once you've read it the film is pretty disappointing in the way it falls back on Hollywood tropes. However, a 'gratuitous' spy plot is not one of them; Enigma is not a documentary, the plot is the story.
I had the same feeling when watching this film. Instead of giving this portrayal the depth Turing deserved, Cumberbatch instead fell back on his usual typecast genius character with minor tweaks. Very disappointing.
I agree with the article on the idea that Turing didn't get jokes. Us hackers like jokes and can very well understand them. How can you do tricky crosswords and not get double meanings, etc.
I don't understand why some caricature of a gay man has to be used when the actual Turing is so much more lively, complete, and interesting. One-dimensional characters might work great in a light comedy or something, but I expect something greater from a work purporting to be a biopic of an important historical figure (and important not just to the war but also for computing, in my opinion his greater contribution to the world).
I've always been skeptical of the suicide issue. We don't know what happened to Alan Turing at the end of his life, but of all the available options suicide by far makes the most sense.
I'm having trouble finding the sources now, but I could've sworn I remembered reading that no-warning, no-note suicide is not at all uncommon. And it's especially true with men, I thought.
I agree with this. We’ve had this discussion on HN before (at least once) [1]. And the claim that Turing “bore the [chemical castration] with fortitude” is ludicrous, and the more likely explanation is that he had erected a facade of equanimity. I still dislike the film’s portrayal of his death because it was too cowardly to point fingers and actually show his state-induced suicide – or too anxious to show it as ambiguous, just like the film couldn’t even bring itself to show him kissing another man, instead resorting to a female love interest. The film makers can cry “historically accurate” all they like. In reality, it’s anything but accurate to put such emphasis on a non-homosexual relationship.
Quite enjoyed the film but I think it's best scene (when they realise how to speed up the machine analysis and manage to decipher the latest transmission) is immediately followed by its worst (melodramatic revelation that one of the characters relatives was about to die).
TLDR; Real life doesn't make for a movie anyone wants to watch, so the director added a bit of extra drama and rearranged a few things to make for a coherent story.
> The fabrications were especially frustrating to me, because we know it’s possible to bring Alan Turing’s story to life in a way that fully honors the true science and history. We know that, because Hugh Whitemore’s 1986 play Breaking the Code did it. The producers of The Imitation Game would’ve done better just to junk their script, and remake Breaking the Code into a Hollywood blockbuster. (Note that there is a 1996 BBC adaptation of Breaking the Code, with Derek Jacobi as Turing.)
I saw Breaking the Code on stage a few years ago and it was pretty good. That said, I don't disagree with the parent either. I can think of a couple of historical plays I've seen during the past couple of years that would probably have benefited by being a bit less literal--i.e. they were rather linear and included characters and events that didn't really contribute to the narrative flow.
Thanks, added to my watch list. My Mum directed a theatre production of this years ago, and it's still one of the most memorable plays I've seen, be interesting to see the Beeb version.
> Real life doesn't make for a movie anyone wants to watch
Except that this is simply patently untrue in this case. The allegation here is precisely that the film makers were too lazy to fully exploit what real life gave them, and instead resorted to Hollywood stock.
And the director didn’t just “rearrange a few things”, he completely mis-represents, at the same time, Turing’s (as well as others’) character, the nature of his work, and the historical progression. After that there’s not much left.
>These errors are not random; there is a method to the muddle. The filmmakers see their hero above all as a martyr of a homophobic Establishment, and they are determined to lay emphasis on his victimhood.
It's good entertainment even if it is quite exaggerated and not 100% historically accurate. If it exposes more people to some of the history of computing and one of its great early engineers then I think that is positive.