About 10yrs of my academic career included studying much of Turing's work, I've read his biography by Hodges multiple times (one of the most incredible books ever written btw, covering in great detail everything you could want to know about Turing, his family, his life and his work), and worked closely with some of the best academics in the country on the subject of Turing.
I'm not showing off, and I don't mean to say my opinion is correct, but let's just say I have at least some claim to know what was going on.
I watched the Imitation Game with my wife who knew little to nothing about Bletchley park and Turing. I have to say, that given 90 minutes I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
I can say with confidence that pretty much everything said or shown in every scene is significantly inaccurate, but taken as a whole, and with an understanding of the restrictions, it's a very good job.
If you can't live without knowing the specific truth, read Hodges. If you can, just watch the film then get on with something else.
> I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
Sincerely, I do defer to you for your opinion of Turing's personality - but when I saw the film it was so very disappointing that Turing was written as a lone-genius type - while it didn't drive the plot, I understand it really wasn't what he was like as a person. Come to think about it, I can't think of any mainstream cinema production that portrayed a leading academic as a _normal person_ - they invariably fall into stock character tropes, and The Imitation Game was no exception. That's what disappointed me the most.
Additionally, like many other historical biographies, the film condenses multiple people - or in this case, entire teams of people into single characters. I can understand that for budgetary and storytelling reasons, but the film's decision to substitute Turing's circle of literally a handful of characters for what would have been hundreds of cryptographers and researchers (out of a Bletchley Park workforce of almost 10,000 people concurrently in early 1945!) was enough to break the film for me - and even if that fudging wouldn't have made me take issue with the film the scenes where Turing-and-Chums single-handedly make moral decisions about the handling of high-level intelligence certainly did. Those scenes added nothing of historical value and would have added emotional tension only to viewers entirely ignorant about how military intelligence gathering and analysis works - which, unfortunately, seems to include the film critics.
Does mainstream cinema production portray anyone as a _normal person_ ? It doesn't stop to academics. Every single profession has its tropes, and it's quite uncommon in my opinion that there's much deviation on it.
Police officers end their phone conversations abruptly, academics are lone genius, managers consider their employees as slaves, chefs dedicate their life to their art...
Cinema has its codes, good or not, so you shouldn't really expect them to not be there I think !
Personally I thought it was rather sad that it ignored completely the massive contribution made by the Polish Cipher Bureau and particularly Marian Rejewski.
In 1939 the Poles basically dumped an absolutely massive amount of information they had worked out about enigma on the British and the French. The Poles had a working system to decrypt enigma from (I think) 1932 up to 1939 when the Germans added more rotors to the machines increasing the complexity significantly. The Polish techniques still worked with the new rotors but the additional complexity slowed them down a lot.
I maybe remembering this incorrectly but I think the Poles managed to construct machines logically identical to enigma machines (i.e. the same output for every input) based just on messages they'd intercepted (without ever seeing an actual enigma machine). They gave one of these machines to the French and one to the British.
The "Bombe" built in Bletchly park was directly inspired by the Polish "Bomba" machines.
Right, when a large corporation bought one of my previous employers we used their more generous "team building" budget to take the software engineering team to Bletchley and one of the reasons was that two of our small (UK based) team were Polish and the Polish contribution on Enigma was so important. There's a little memorial to their work at the site.
I've never watched the movie, having also spent a bunch of time working with the Turing Archive's collection of his other work (he was really interested in morphogenesis, a corner of biology) as a side job when I was at postgraduate student I expect I'd just find the portrayal annoying.
It was not exactly inaccurate, more dumbed down. The film covered the basics well I thought, his early life, the impact of a relationship with a boy named "Christopher", the use of Bombe in breaking Enigma and the secrecy needed to keep the code-breaking from everyone. His personal life was I thought fair - it certainly compared role of women and gay men, and said something about need for brain not brawn.
It did dumb down in some horrible areas however. There was a overdone conflict between him and his superiors and peers - until they too realised he was right in Hollywood fashion. The actual code breaking was ... "my god what if they put Heil Hitler at the end of each message. We could use the new computer you have built to break the message and then put the play on right here."
But to be fair I don't think even I would have sat through ten minutes of Cumberbatch explaining cipher theory to get a proper grip on that.
Overall, its a good way to introduce the kids to the origin of computers, the need to stick to your principles, and prejudice is bad.
Right, tough to convey more of the true story and character of Turing in a 2 hr film. But my takeaways were a few memorable things like the moment of pure achievement/problem solving joy that any engineer/dev around here can relate to - collective joy at cracking a puzzle. I felt it.
And the pain that Turing had later in the film/in his life - I felt that too. Cumberbatch's weird self, and the overbearing lone/nerd vibe they gave Turing aside, they tried to convey the pain and sadness and I think it was portrayed enough for the audience to feel it and sympathize.
Could be argued that the film contributed to this path that he's now going to be on the banknote perhaps?
I was very disappointed in the portrayal of "Christopher"!
They have him say "boy" but they never clarify that the "boy" was 19 years old. I have little doubt that some people left the movie thinking that Turing was a pedophile.
Not that boy - Turing had a ... love affair (?) / crush (?) on a fellow school student (christopher) in their teens at boarding school. The boy died tragically during a summer vacation, having a profound effect on Turing.
Christopher was the name he gave to the first Bombe I think.
I don't think any part of the film implied pedophilia - not at all.
I'm also speaking from memory, but I remember being pretty upset that they weren't more explicit about his crime being strictly homosexuality and not about the partner's age.
The only actual description of his crime, if I recall, was that single sentence: "[...] accused of intriguing a young man to touch my penis [...]" at about 50 seconds into that clip.
I don't know. Maybe not everyone would interpret that description badly, but it doesn't even sound consensual to me. It sounds like he's describing himself as being accused of manipulating a child.
I'm not showing off, and I don't mean to say my opinion is correct, but let's just say I have at least some claim to know what was going on.
I watched the Imitation Game with my wife who knew little to nothing about Bletchley park and Turing. I have to say, that given 90 minutes I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
I can say with confidence that pretty much everything said or shown in every scene is significantly inaccurate, but taken as a whole, and with an understanding of the restrictions, it's a very good job.
If you can't live without knowing the specific truth, read Hodges. If you can, just watch the film then get on with something else.