As I said a couple of days ago, since I've had the opportunity to watch "The Imitation Game" - three times - and found Christian Caryl's criticism totally to the point, but I will also scold myself that what I wrote in my introductory post could give someone the impression that Benedict Cumberbatch is to blame and that Turing's nerdiness is the movies big problem.
It is not. The problems of this movie are a lot more fundamental and serious. The problem is, that Cumberbatch and the other actors have been handed shit by producers, writer and director.
Urban has pointed out, that this movie isn't a do
entary, it's a biopic. Sure, absolutely. But my ripost on Caryl's and my own behalf is this: imagine a biopic on Frank Kameny, the man who started the modern gay movement in the early 60s in the US, and imagine that in this movie Kameny is implicitly portraid as being a pedophile, and his pedophilia caused by his male homosexuality.
Then would it be an acceptable defence - Well it isn't a do
entary anyway, it's just a biopic! Lighten up!
It's that bad. Almost that bad.
There are a handfull of scenes in the movie, that tells you what kind of story will be told:
1) Turing's first meeting with Alastair Denniston (7 min 40 sec)
This will be the story of the epic clash between Stupidass Fuck (Commander Denniston) and Brilliant Math Genious (Turing).
But Denniston wasn't a stupid idiot and - actually it wasn't Turing who was the original breaker of the Enigma code and not the inventor of the so-called Bombe-machine.
The original Enigma code breaker was a group of brilliant cryptanalysts working for the Polish government with Marian Rajewski as their leader, who had been reading Enigma-do
ents since 1932, and the first generation of Bombe were constructed in 1938.
But as we all know, serious political shit started happening in Europe, and from early 1939 on, the German military made some important improvements on Enigma that made the code much more difficult to brake.
Rajewski and the Polish government realized that they needed much bigger resources to get on with the new type of Enigma, and hence, invited Polands British and French allies in june 1939 to learn some lessons from the Polish cryptologist. Leading the small British group to debrief Marian Rajewski was commander Alistair Denniston. Who definitely wasn't stupid as fuck.
And there was another difficult problem. Enigma wasn't a single thing. Not only had the Germans made some important innovations in the basic construct around 1939, but there were three different versions of the military Enigma - Army, Air Force and Naval - of which Naval Enigma was by far the most difficult to breake.
The film tells a totally bogus story telling you that Turing and the Bletchley group didn't have any success until in the year 1941. Thats bullshit! Thanks to the brilliant work already done by Rejewski and all hard work by the Turing-group, they had lots of success - with Army and Air Force Enigma. But starting cracking the Naval Enigma had to wait to 1941.
2) Young Turing bullied at Shereborne School (24 min 30 sec)
This scene gives some important implicit ad-on to the Turing character - this young genious is a GAY SISSY genious, viciously bullied by the brutal school jocks putting him under the class room floor, as if in a coffin. Or closet.
So the Turing boy is a boy with a secret. A dangerous shameful secret.
But you might question how much of a secret being homo was in Turings university collegue - King's Collegue, Cambridge - in the the 1930s : Wittgenstein was homo and CD Broad, who was dean of the philosophy institution, was not only homo but making homoerotic pass in 1939 on a young brilliant student from Finland, Georg Henrik von Wright, who wasn't homo at all, but would become Witthensteins successor in Cambridge.
Other brilliant homos were John Maynard Keynes, and of course Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, two of the infamous Cambridge Five spying for Sovjet.
And the Bloomsbury group had it's own gay kernel, the Bloomsbuggers: John Maynard Keynes, EM Forster, Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant.
3) Turing understands that Cairncross is the Sovjet spy traitor (1h 27 min 45 sec) but MI6 boss Stuart Menzies revels that he has known all along (1h 29 min 45 sec).
In the movie, one of the persons in the Bletchley group is John Cairncross, who was a Sovjet spy. In the 1h 27min scene, this insight dawns on Turing, who threatens Cairncross that he will tell Denniston. No you won't, says Cairncross, because if you tell on my secret, then I'll tell on yours - and you know what they do to homosexuals, don't you!
So Turing gets scared, and for a moment it seems Turing-the-hero will become Turing-the-traitor, since his homo identity seems to be more important than his countrys wellfare.
But in the 1h 29min scene, MI6 straight heterodaddy boss Stuart Menzies saves the day since he has been in the know from the very beginning that Cairncross is the bad spy apple.
So now we know, that while Turing might be a math genious, he's also a very weak moral character prepared to betray his country BECAUSE OF his homosexuality.
But behind homo genious Turing is the true heterodaddy smartass Menzies. The kind of men that saves the world.
Well what's the problem?
There was a guy named John Cairncross who was a Sovjet spy and who worked in Bletchley Park. But most probably he never even met Turing there. Bletchley was a big place where several tusand people worked and the non-existant meeting between Turing is entirely constructed in the screenwriters and directors homophobic imagination.
Do you like apples? Do you like homophobic apples? I don't.
