Movies of the good kind we have looked upon.

[Seth]

It might be fun to watch the recent movie about how the Enigma machine was captured before seeing The Imitation Game again. I think it was called "U-571" or something similar.

From Wikipedia...

The Allies captured Enigma-related codebooks and machines about 15 times during World War II. All but two of these actions were by British forces. The Royal Canadian Navy captured U-774 and the U.S. Navy seized U-505 in June 1944. By this time the Allies were already routinely decoding German naval Enigma traffic.

By all meansd watch the film as a wartime romp. But, if that's where you get your historical data, watch out!

Dude, it's a movie. Get over yourself.

[pErvinalia]

I think you need to get over your apparent homophobia. The back story to Turing is as much about his sexuality as it was about his code-breaking. There's been movies about the enigma business which deal with solely the code breaking. There was a really good one a decade or so ago, that I've forgotten the name of. It might have actually simply been "Enigma".

[Hermit]

There was a really good one a decade or so ago, that I've forgotten the name of. It might have actually simply been "Enigma".

Enigma - Breaking the Code. A romantic drama set in the environment of the Bletchley Park compound. Apart from the romance other fictional additions involved spying, treachery and betrayal, all of which were necessary devices to make the main plot, the "romance" and its outcome, work. There is really fuck-all by way of tracing let alone explaining the technical details involved that were necessary to break the encryption algorithm. It was more of a historical retelling of events. Still, a thoroughly enjoyable film. Good script, good cast, good direction. Good enough for me to buy a copy on DVD and to buy a replacement for it when it went elsewhere.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, that's the one. Maybe I am mixing memories of it with some actual doco's of the bletchley park work. Really fascinating stuff.

[Seth]

I think you need to get over your apparent homophobia. The back story to Turing is as much about his sexuality as it was about his code-breaking. There's been movies about the enigma business which deal with solely the code breaking. There was a really good one a decade or so ago, that I've forgotten the name of. It might have actually simply been "Enigma".

I'm not in the least bit homophobic, I have gay friends and always have. I grew up in the theater surrounded by them. My first high-school girlfriend was bisexual. I just don't care for irrelevant political posturing in a historical movie. If they wanted to make a movie about the gross injustice of the Gross Indecency Act and it's effects, then they should have made THAT movie, which would have been a whole lot more depressing as they try to recount the trials of the 45,000 British homosexuals who were chemically castrated during that despicable period in UK (WHAT! Not American???!!) history. They could have done something like "The Magdalene Sisters" that zeroed-in on the abusive nature of Catholic work houses in Ireland.

It's as if his genius was an afterthought to the screenwriter, who wanted to trumpet his sexual orientation, and it detracted from what should have been a celebration of his immense intellect and the saving of millions of Allied lives. Turning him into a victim after the fact (his prosecution didn't occur till after the war) just tarnishes his brilliance and dedication to saving lives. It had very little to do with Turing's genius and everything to do with slapping movie audiences in the face with politically-correct propaganda by suckering them into going to a movie about a wartime intelligence victory and then sapping them with the homosexual political agenda. Shit, even the ads prominently featured Kira Knightly all dolled up in order to attract men to the movie. Do you think it would have been as well-attended if the adverts had featured Turing and one of his lovers tangled up naked on a mattress in front of his decoding machine?

It was fucking dishonest and demeaning to Turing and his achievements. It made him out to be a pathetic loser in the end.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I think you need to get over your apparent homophobia. The back story to Turing is as much about his sexuality as it was about his code-breaking. There's been movies about the enigma business which deal with solely the code breaking. There was a really good one a decade or so ago, that I've forgotten the name of. It might have actually simply been "Enigma".

I'm not in the least bit homophobic, I have gay friends and always have. I grew up in the theater surrounded by them. My first high-school girlfriend was bisexual. I just don't care for irrelevant political posturing in a historical movie. If they wanted to make a movie about the gross injustice of the Gross Indecency Act and it's effects, then they should have made THAT movie, which would have been a whole lot more depressing as they try to recount the trials of the 45,000 British homosexuals who were chemically castrated during that despicable period in UK (WHAT! Not American???!!) history. They could have done something like "The Magdalene Sisters" that zeroed-in on the abusive nature of Catholic work houses in Ireland.

It's as if his genius was an afterthought to the screenwriter, who wanted to trumpet his sexual orientation, and it detracted from what should have been a celebration of his immense intellect and the saving of millions of Allied lives. Turning him into a victim after the fact (his prosecution didn't occur till after the war) just tarnishes his brilliance and dedication to saving lives. It had very little to do with Turing's genius and everything to do with slapping movie audiences in the face with politically-correct propaganda by suckering them into going to a movie about a wartime intelligence victory and then sapping them with the homosexual political agenda. Shit, even the ads prominently featured Kira Knightly all dolled up in order to attract men to the movie. Do you think it would have been as well-attended if the adverts had featured Turing and one of his lovers tangled up naked on a mattress in front of his decoding machine?

It was fucking dishonest and demeaning to Turing and his achievements. It made him out to be a pathetic loser in the end.

Turing's relatives did not think it dishonest or demeaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitat ... ing_family

And he was pathetic at the end - thanks to enforced chemical castration and the subsequent depression and suicide.

And he was a loser. He lost what should have been universal acclaim as a war hero due to his work being kept top secret for 50 years. The part in the film where he was discovered with a rent boy during investigations into his being a Soviet spy were based on actual events. He lost his dignity due to the antiquated, homophobic attitudes of the time.

The American poster for the film received much criticism. As did the complete lack of any mention of homosexual themes in the film in any official publicity. In the UK, by contrast, the poster did not show Keira Knightly at all - just Barnaby Clusterfuck in from of Turing's machine - and there was much discussion of Turing's sexuality, including a very public campaign to pardon the 49,000 men convicted of similar "crimes" in the UK..

[Seth]

I think you need to get over your apparent homophobia. The back story to Turing is as much about his sexuality as it was about his code-breaking. There's been movies about the enigma business which deal with solely the code breaking. There was a really good one a decade or so ago, that I've forgotten the name of. It might have actually simply been "Enigma".

I'm not in the least bit homophobic, I have gay friends and always have. I grew up in the theater surrounded by them. My first high-school girlfriend was bisexual. I just don't care for irrelevant political posturing in a historical movie. If they wanted to make a movie about the gross injustice of the Gross Indecency Act and it's effects, then they should have made THAT movie, which would have been a whole lot more depressing as they try to recount the trials of the 45,000 British homosexuals who were chemically castrated during that despicable period in UK (WHAT! Not American???!!) history. They could have done something like "The Magdalene Sisters" that zeroed-in on the abusive nature of Catholic work houses in Ireland.

It's as if his genius was an afterthought to the screenwriter, who wanted to trumpet his sexual orientation, and it detracted from what should have been a celebration of his immense intellect and the saving of millions of Allied lives. Turning him into a victim after the fact (his prosecution didn't occur till after the war) just tarnishes his brilliance and dedication to saving lives. It had very little to do with Turing's genius and everything to do with slapping movie audiences in the face with politically-correct propaganda by suckering them into going to a movie about a wartime intelligence victory and then sapping them with the homosexual political agenda. Shit, even the ads prominently featured Kira Knightly all dolled up in order to attract men to the movie. Do you think it would have been as well-attended if the adverts had featured Turing and one of his lovers tangled up naked on a mattress in front of his decoding machine?

It was fucking dishonest and demeaning to Turing and his achievements. It made him out to be a pathetic loser in the end.

Turing's relatives did not think it dishonest or demeaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitat ... ing_family

And he was pathetic at the end - thanks to enforced chemical castration and the subsequent depression and suicide.

Indeed. But that has nothing whatever to do with his wartime work and should have been left out of the movie.

And he was a loser. He lost what should have been universal acclaim as a war hero due to his work being kept top secret for 50 years.

He and everyone else at Bletchley Park knew that going in to the project.

The part in the film where he was discovered with a rent boy during investigations into his being a Soviet spy were based on actual events. He lost his dignity due to the antiquated, homophobic attitudes of the time.

I agree. But that's got nothing to do with breaking the Enigma code. Nothing whatsoever.

The American poster for the film received much criticism.
As did the complete lack of any mention of homosexual themes in the film in any official publicity. In the UK, by contrast, the poster did not show Keira Knightly at all - just Barnaby Clusterfuck in from of Turing's machine - and there was much discussion of Turing's sexuality, including a very public campaign to pardon the 49,000 men convicted of similar "crimes" in the UK..

What I said: the movie was a dishonest attempt at purveying homosexual propaganda by deluding customers into believing it was about Enigma.

Now understand me carefully, I do NOT mean that I disapprove of the pardon campaign or even the excoriating of the UK for it's neolithic homophobia of the period. I don't. I just don't like being suckered in to seeing a pro-homosexual movie by being lied to about the content of the film, which was advertised here as a wartime drama with quite literally no reference to homosexuality.

i don't blame the filmmaker, I blame the marketing department and the asshats in Hollywood who thought that people wouldn't go see a movie about a homosexual...who essentially saved the world from Nazi domination almost single-handedly.

Of course, being an intelligent and well-read individual, I knew long, long ago that Turing was a homosexual and died because of Brit homophobia, so it really wasn't a surprise, but I object on principle. I'm glad to hear that things were presented differently in the UK.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

What I said: the movie was a dishonest attempt at purveying homosexual propaganda by deluding customers into believing it was about Enigma.

Why was it? The film was a reasonably honest biopic of a man that was an extremely interesting character on many levels. Nothing about it implies that it is "about Enigma" and if the surrounding publicity in the States implied that, then that is the fault of the neolithic homophobia of the USA in this current age!

Cracking the Enigma code was just one part of his life. The title of the film comes from his pioneering work on AI and refers to the "Turing Test" for machine intelligence. His profound social ineptitude, eccentricity and homosexuality are as important to the film as his genius, or any other aspect of his life, as without them, we cannot hope to understand the man himself.

[Seth]

What I said: the movie was a dishonest attempt at purveying homosexual propaganda by deluding customers into believing it was about Enigma.

Why was it? The film was a reasonably honest biopic of a man that was an extremely interesting character on many levels. Nothing about it implies that it is "about Enigma" and if the surrounding publicity in the States implied that, then that is the fault of the neolithic homophobia of the USA in this current age!

Well, as it happens I happen to agree with you about the American market, which is the market I saw it in, where nothing whatever was said about it being a biopic about Turing's homosexuality.

Cracking the Enigma code was just one part of his life.

Yeah, the one the movie was advertised to be about.

The title of the film comes from his pioneering work on AI and refers to the "Turing Test" for machine intelligence.

Yup.

His profound social ineptitude, eccentricity and homosexuality are as important to the film as his genius, or any other aspect of his life, as without them, we cannot hope to understand the man himself.

Actually, I don't think his homosexuality is in the least bit important because it doesn't matter to me whether he was a homosexual or not. But it's not the obvious clues in the pre war settings or during the war that bother me, it's the "flash forwards" to his prosecution under the Gross Indecency laws that detracted from the very interesting examination of Turing's life up to the point of his greatest triumph. I'd have been much more satisfied with a movie that lauded that success without adding the Debbie Downer ending, which is properly part of a completely different movie, one which really ought to be made out of respect for the tens of thousands of men who were brutally mistreated by the UK government.

They did a nice job of alluding to his quite rational fears about those laws in the pre-Enigma parts, and it was perfectly clear to me that he lived in fear and confusion about his sexual orientation while doing his best work, and that his fellows knew perfectly well he was a poofter and did everything they could to protect him, up to and including marrying him.

I just found the ending extremely depressing and I think it detracted from the amazing work he did during the war and did so unnecessarily.

But that's just me. I can respect that you feel differently about it. I'm merely voicing my personal opinion on the movie, I'm not passing judgment on the man, although I am passing judgment on the UK.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I agree that it was particularly depressing and non-Hollywood of Turing to end his life by getting arrested and dying. That part of the film should have been replaced with a song & dance number.


In other news: Gone Girl. I enjoyed it. I am now slightly less pissed off that Affleck will be playing Batman - he can act a bit - who knew?

[tattuchu]

I agree that it was particularly depressing and non-Hollywood of Turing to end his life by getting arrested and dying. That part of the film should have been replaced with a song & dance number.


In other news: Gone Girl. I enjoyed it. I am now slightly less pissed off that Affleck will be playing Batman - he can act a bit - who knew?

I've always thought he was a good actor (his brother Casey as well). I even loved him as Daredevil

Anyway, about The Imitation Game. I always thought it was a bio picture. I never thought it was specifically about the Enigma machine

[rachelbean]

I had the opposite reaction as Seth, in that because it was advertised as a biopic I felt they didn't show enough about the role of homosexuality in his lif, and I felt the end was rushed. Still, I enjoyed it overall and agree Bendypunch Cummerbund did a very nice job.

[Seth]

I had the opposite reaction as Seth, in that because it was advertised as a biopic I felt they didn't show enough about the role of homosexuality in his lif, and I felt the end was rushed. Still, I enjoyed it overall and agree Bendypunch Cummerbund did a very nice job.

Yes he did. I see two different movies unsuccessfully melded into one. The first would establish Turing's genius and heroism during the war, and the second would focus on his horrific end and the reasons for it.

I enjoyed the movie too, but was put off by the ending.

[rachelbean]

I think we agree on that, it did feel to me like there were two movies trying to be made into one and it didn't serve either as well as it could because of it.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I think we agree on that, it did feel to me like there were two movies trying to be made into one and it didn't serve either as well as it could because of it.

I think that kind of criticism is true of most biopics - unless the subject has lived the dullest life imaginable, in which case, why make a biopic!?

My biggest fault with the film is the compression of facts in the Enigma section. Turing is portrayed as far more of a loner than he actually was and given the credit for actions that he had no part in. He is made out to be the first and only person to consider using a machine to crack the code when, in fact, his machine was an adaptation and improvement of the earlier Polish "Bombe" device and such research was already a part of the Bletchley effort. Also, limiting the number of searches required through identifying known phrases was a long-term project which ultimately bore fruit, not an instant, dramatic success that saved the jobs of him and his colleagues! And as for him dreaming up the machine in one flash of inspiration... No. He was rather a very major contributor to what was a team effort.

They also showed him running several times in the film with no real explanation as to why. Turing was a fine distance runner. He ran marathons and, had the war not intervened, may well have represented Britain at the Olympics. It is a well-known fact that, on several occasions, he ran both legs of the 40-odd miles from Bletchley to London at weekends! When the 1926 General Strike coincided with his first day at Sherbourne school, leading to the trains being cancelled, he cycled the 60 miles in two days, aged 13. Whether these details were skipped due to time constraints or because they don't fit with the public perception of the nerdish, unathletic professorial type, I can't say. I think that some hint of them would have added to the piece quite a bit.

A biopic is, out of necessity, a fiction based upon fact. As such, The imitation Game manages to tie together the main themes of a fascinating life in an exciting, dramatic way without too many jarring anachronisms and inaccuracies - about as much as can be hoped, really.