10 Jan The Imitation Game – Codebreaker
The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who was prominent among the scientists who cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code.
(2014) The Imitation Game is the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who was prominent among the scientists who cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code. They worked some fifty miles north of London at Bletchley Park, Great Britain’s super-secret Government Code and Cypher School disguised as a radio factory. Ultra was the name used when referring to intelligence efforts to break German codes.
The Enigma was Germany’s complex typewriter-looking rotor machine that allowed them to send coded messages. The problem was that every day the criteria was changed. Alan Turing perfected a machine which with 12 miles of intricate wire circuits and using unbelievably complicated mathematical calculations was able to crack thousands of messages each day.
The movie included a lot about Turing’s personal life. Turing is played by award-winning English actor Benedict Cumberbatch, and his good friend and short-term fiancée Joan Clarke is played by Keira Knightly. According to his family, their relationship in the movie is overplayed, but it was based on true events.
In 1952, Turing was convicted for the criminal offence of being a homosexual. This led to his death two years later, determined by inquest to be a suicide. He was 41 years old. Because of the top secret nature of his work during the war, it wasn’t widely known what an important contribution he had made to the war effort and certainly not that his ideas would lead to the computer sciences that we take for granted today.
Finally in 2009, the British Prime Minister made an official public apology. Queen Elizabeth granted a posthumous pardon in 2013.
The original score for the film by French composer Alexandre Desplat, was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra. Desplat has done the music for dozens of films including Unbroken, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Monuments Men, The King’s Speech, Julie & Julia. I’m a fan, but on the official website the same snippet goes on and on and makes me want to close it down. And just getting into the website requires a little Turing logic I think. You can also try a “Crack the Code” game. Good luck.
A representation of what the code-breaking machine looked like. It was called the “bombe.” (photo from the official site theimitationgamemovie.com)
Right after I saw The Imitation Game, I watched the 2011 hour long drama-documentary Codebreaker. The story follows Turing’s sessions with Dr. Franz Greenbaum, the psychiatrist he worked with during the last 18 months of his life. Dr. Greenbaum and his family had a close relationship with Turing during that time. Both his daughters explain. Codebreaker was a good adjunct to the movie I had just seen … It was less about the code-breaking and more about the person.
I enjoyed both The Imitation Game and Codebreaker very much. Some reviews for The Imitation Game have been critical that the facts were entirely accurate, that Turing’s sexuality wasn’t correctly portrayed, etc. etc. To me, when a film about a historical event or person motivates the watcher to turn around and read more about the subject, then it’s a success. Turing contributed so much, not only to the war effort but to modern technologies. Everyone should recognize his name. In 1999, Time Magazine named Turing as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and stated: “The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine.”
I found a website maintained by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing’s biographer. The movie was based on his book, Alan Turing: The Enigma. Here you will find links to much more, including original documents and photographs.
The Imitation Game at amazon.com
Codebreaker at amazon.com
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