Z/Web

This film is about Alan Turing, the Cambridge mathematician who basically invented the computer, and his efforts during WWII to build a machine to crack the Nazi’s “unbreakable” Enigma code-making device. We basically follow two stories: one during the war, and one a decade later, when cops following up on a break-in at his house figure out he was a homosexual and decide to arrest him. There are also occasional flashbacks to Turing’s school days.

That dual storyline is a little confusing — the time jump between scenes was not always well established (at least the childhood ones were clear) — but the concept did help propel the movie and provided some additional tension.

Overall, I thought this was fantastic: the performance of Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing was excellent, with just enough drama to be compelling without going over into hysteria or melodrama, and the supporting cast was also terrific. The story was good, well-paced and interesting, and the personal revelations were helpful in understanding the man.

The film is heavy-handed in overemphasizing the discrimination Turing faced (a bit “preachy”), and I really wanted more details about exactly what his machine did and how it worked. (The film is remarkably short of technical details, perhaps out of fear that it might bore viewers — but without it we really don’t understand half of what Turing is doing in the movie! It also makes it more difficult to truly appreciate his genius since we don’t know what he actually did.)

Despite these flaws, the film works. There are tons of absolutely fabulous scenes. Turning’s “job interview” at Bletchley Park is absolutely masterful in revealing Turing’s personality. I loved it when a guard tries to send Joan, a woman applying to be a codebreaker, to the “secretarial pool,” and then she solves a crossword even faster than Turing. But my very favorite scene scene was when young Turning is at school and a mate gives him a book on ciphers and explains that they are encrypted messages that everyone can see but only those with the key can understand. Turing asks him, “How is that different from talking?”

For him, you see, everyone seemed to be talking in a code he couldn’t break. He was oblivious to the hidden communication that most humans practice. (Example: a colleague mentions three times that they’re going to lunch, obviously inviting the still-working Turing to come. Finally, exasperated, he tells him this, and Turning is surprised and says: “You didn’t invite me. You merely said you were going to lunch.” Which was literally true.)

Ultimately, the film is a little sad, as Turning’s work was kept secret for fifty years and he never received the recognition he deserved. Breaking Enigma pretty much won the war for the Allies — at minimum it shorted the war by years and saved the lives of millions. I found it fascinating that a man who really didn’t understand other people could be responsible for saving so many. And Turning’s work on early computing is responsible for all the computers we have today. That’s an amazing legacy for a man almost forgotten by history simply because he was an “odd duck” and hard to work with.

What a convoluted shambles! This film has a terrific cast, an intriguing script, and a semi-interesting premise (a lawyer gets involved in the drug trade and learns the cost of that when things go wrong), but bungles it all by shrouding everything in so much mystery that it’s incomprehensible.

Things start off bad right from the beginning as we’re suddenly inside an intimate sex scene between two main characters. There’s no setup, so we have no idea who these people are, and thus the scene feels invasive, as though we’re voyeurs. Later I realized the purpose of the scene was to establish how much the two genuinely loved each other, but that completely backfired: because the initial focus was on their physical relationship, I assumed that it was just about lust and kept thinking that there would be a twist later in the film where all their lovely spoken promises proved to be just words. Instead, their love is supposed to be the heart of the entire film!

From there the film goes into the drug business and makes its second big mistake: it assumes we understand everything about the drug business. There are a dozen characters doing a bunch of seemingly unrelated things and there’s very little to connect everything.

Some of that is acceptable, of course. As the viewer I’m willing to give a film some time, but this film never does explain everything. It’s also virtually impossible to gain an understanding through the convoluted dialog — which is pretty and colorful, and sometimes interesting, but obtuse and vague and never speaks plainly.

Another problem is that several of the characters look similar to each other and the way the movie is shot — with angled views that don’t show a clear view of the character — makes that even worse, creating more comprehension problems. Few people refer to others by name, except in later conversations, so everything is quite baffling.

There are moments of interesting action and some dramatic scenes, but everything’s piecemeal. It’s like instead of the jigsaw puzzle coming together as the film continues, the pieces are just rearranged. By the end, we’re just as confused as at the beginning.

I’d caught part of this on one of my movie channels and it looking intriguing and I really wanted to like it, but it’s a wannabe, not real movie.