Review: The Imitation Game

[Caeser25]

Nice summation, Will- I agree completely. Except for the last few minutes, I thought it was well-produced with good cast and acting.

I agree it was interesting movie except for the end.

[Dave_M]

Enigma was initially cracked by a team of Poles led by Marian Rejewski in the 1930s. When Poland was overrun, they shared with Brits, who later shared with US.

While the Poles had found weaknesses in the system, there was still a lot of manual work to decrypt a single message, and allies were overwhelmed trying this. They were basically using handheld techniques like most folks use to crack the puzzles in newspapers.

Turing's contribution was to automate this process with a general purpose machine that could recover the rotor settings and allow an easy decryption of any of the day's messages.

tl;dr:

Poles cracked Enigma, Turing automated the process.

The Poles cracked an earlier Enigma, but once more rotors and settings were added their methods became entirely impractical. The British did use their initial work as a basis for their own though.

[Moose-Knuckle]

I watched it over the weekend, actually. I enjoyed it. Could've done without the awkward pre-teen homo scenes at Sherborne school however.

I'm sorry but you lost me.

There were no homo scenes at the school. Only scene that even suggested they might be was when he decrypted his friend's note that said; "I love you". No swapping spit or any of that.

[Moose-Knuckle]

Enigma was initially cracked by a team of Poles led by Marian Rejewski in the 1930s. When Poland was overrun, they shared with Brits, who later shared with US.

While the Poles had found weaknesses in the system, there was still a lot of manual work to decrypt a single message, and allies were overwhelmed trying this. They were basically using handheld techniques like most folks use to crack the puzzles in newspapers.

Turing's contribution was to automate this process with a general purpose machine that could recover the rotor settings and allow an easy decryption of any of the day's messages.

tl;dr:

Poles cracked Enigma, Turing automated the process.

The Poles cracked an earlier Enigma, but once more rotors and settings were added their methods became entirely impractical. The British did use their initial work as a basis for their own though.

In the film MI6 did divulge they got their Enigma machine from the Polish Resistance. However that was all that was mentioned about them. Good to know they were on to breaking it prior to Turing's team.

[Greg Bell]

Very enjoyable flick. I didn't mind the (sort of made up, sort of true) end because I knew that was the price of getting a movie made about such an esoteric subject.

I just saw an Enigma machine at the Imperial War Museum. Awesomeness.

I imagine it could be a very lonely existence when functioning on such a intellectual level.

Nah, it's fine.

[Koshinn]

nevermind i'm tired

[ScottsBad]

I thought it was an excellent movie, I guess they had to emphasize the gay aspect to get the movie made. It bothered me that they had to do that, I don't like politics in my movies. Not that it wasn't legitimately part of his story, but that they almost made his sexuality more important than the brilliance of his invention and the thousands of lives they saved. Anyway, I thought it was a great movie overall. Maybe not historically accurate, but a good movie is seldom based on absolute truth.

[Moose-Knuckle]

I thought it was an excellent movie, I guess they had to emphasize the gay aspect to get the movie made. It bothered me that they had to do that, I don't like politics in my movies. Not that it wasn't legitimately part of his story, but that they almost made his sexuality more important than the brilliance of his invention and the thousands of lives they saved. Anyway, I thought it was a great movie overall. Maybe not historically accurate, but a good movie is seldom based on absolute truth.

You'd be surprise to find out the opposite was true. It's an independent film that none of the major studios would touch. I thought that was weird myself. I watched a documentary on the film and the life of Turing interviewing the cast, authors of several books on him, and the screen play writer. The writer and one of the films producers are gay so Alan Turing was kind of a childhood hero to them. The writer is a big tech geek so he looks up to guys like Turing like most kids would look up to Babe Ruth or Michael Jordan.

[Dave_M]

I thought it was an excellent movie, I guess they had to emphasize the gay aspect to get the movie made. It bothered me that they had to do that, I don't like politics in my movies. Not that it wasn't legitimately part of his story, but that they almost made his sexuality more important than the brilliance of his invention and the thousands of lives they saved. Anyway, I thought it was a great movie overall. Maybe not historically accurate, but a good movie is seldom based on absolute truth.

I hear you but to ignore him being gay would be a disservice. Here's a guy who both helped win the war and came up with the basis for modern computers, who was later ostracized and marginalized solely due to his homosexuality. Lost his clearance (and therefore his job), chemically castrated, and received no public recognition until far after his death.

If that's not part of the tragedy of his tale, nothing is.

[WillBrink]

I hear you but to ignore him being gay would be a disservice. Here's a guy who both helped win the war and came up with the basis for modern computers, who was later ostracized and marginalized solely due to his homosexuality. Lost his clearance (and therefore his job), chemically castrated, and received no public recognition until far after his death.

If that's not part of the tragedy of his tale, nothing is.

Agreed, his sexual orientation was not just peripheral to the story, but a national disgrace, and I thought the director did a god job of balancing the historical aspects of his contributions to the war effort (he saved millions of lives at the very least) and the obvious social/cultural aspects of his life and his end, essential to the story. He was a national, more like an international hero in every sense of the word, and that's what he got for his efforts. Poor SOB.