It's a low budget BBC version of a talky play about Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician and homosexual who is haunted by the authorities and commits suicide. I don't know how the Brits do it. Here we are, churning out expensive pep pills like "A Brilliant Mind."
Before watching it, I was a little afraid I'd get bogged down in math, a subject in which I have the skills of an ox. But there's not much about math in it. And the last thing we see of Turing being introduced to the Enigma machine, which controls the operation of German U-boats in World War II, is his pausing over this compact but complex apparatus, fingering his chin, and saying, "Hmmmm." He tries to explain it later, when the extent of bureaucratic interest in the interaction between his sex life and his secret research is becoming clearer to him, but he fails. I got more out of his impassioned spiel to his boss at Bletchley Park, Richard Johnson, when Turing goes on about "consistency, completeness, and decidability." I think I understood it because it has to do not just with math but with science in general. I got Goedel's paradox because Turing explains it so simply, and I got "decidability" only if it relates in the way I hope it does to Karl Popper. If that's wrong, I got lost.
That would be disappointing because I wanted MORE of an explanation of what his work was about. Instead, most of the film deals with the "enigma" of his sexual life. It's hard now to believe exactly how primitive our views of sexuality were sixty years ago, both in Britain and elsewhere. And Turing was no manipulator. Aside from his brainstorms and his spells of mutual masturbation, he was naive, blunt, and sloppy. Derek Jacobi has Turing and his mannerisms -- his whole personality -- pinned down perfectly. It's a masterful performance.
The rest of the cast does equally well. Turing's mother is the Queen of Denial. Richard Johnson is Turing's sympathetic but pragmatic boss at Bletchley. I've always admired Richard Johnson's work, ever since "The Haunting" (1963), in which he plays a character with my title and profession. Of course he's aged quite a bit and it sent me rushing to the mirror to make sure I was as radiantly youthful as ever. He does a marvelous job here as a bisexual who has learned the ropes. And, if nothing else, he illustrates exactly how ugly men's clothing was in 1940. If Turing had been a different sort of guy, he'd have leaped to his feet at their introduction and shouted, "That SUIT is a CATASTROPHE!"
It's a sad movie though. It leaves us wondering why we can't leave other people to their own devices as long as they hurt no one. At the time, the official argument was that you can't have "nancy boys" in positions where security might be compromised by blackmail. The solution, of course, is simple. Make it all perfectly public and legal in the first place.
Before watching it, I was a little afraid I'd get bogged down in math, a subject in which I have the skills of an ox. But there's not much about math in it. And the last thing we see of Turing being introduced to the Enigma machine, which controls the operation of German U-boats in World War II, is his pausing over this compact but complex apparatus, fingering his chin, and saying, "Hmmmm." He tries to explain it later, when the extent of bureaucratic interest in the interaction between his sex life and his secret research is becoming clearer to him, but he fails. I got more out of his impassioned spiel to his boss at Bletchley Park, Richard Johnson, when Turing goes on about "consistency, completeness, and decidability." I think I understood it because it has to do not just with math but with science in general. I got Goedel's paradox because Turing explains it so simply, and I got "decidability" only if it relates in the way I hope it does to Karl Popper. If that's wrong, I got lost.
That would be disappointing because I wanted MORE of an explanation of what his work was about. Instead, most of the film deals with the "enigma" of his sexual life. It's hard now to believe exactly how primitive our views of sexuality were sixty years ago, both in Britain and elsewhere. And Turing was no manipulator. Aside from his brainstorms and his spells of mutual masturbation, he was naive, blunt, and sloppy. Derek Jacobi has Turing and his mannerisms -- his whole personality -- pinned down perfectly. It's a masterful performance.
The rest of the cast does equally well. Turing's mother is the Queen of Denial. Richard Johnson is Turing's sympathetic but pragmatic boss at Bletchley. I've always admired Richard Johnson's work, ever since "The Haunting" (1963), in which he plays a character with my title and profession. Of course he's aged quite a bit and it sent me rushing to the mirror to make sure I was as radiantly youthful as ever. He does a marvelous job here as a bisexual who has learned the ropes. And, if nothing else, he illustrates exactly how ugly men's clothing was in 1940. If Turing had been a different sort of guy, he'd have leaped to his feet at their introduction and shouted, "That SUIT is a CATASTROPHE!"
It's a sad movie though. It leaves us wondering why we can't leave other people to their own devices as long as they hurt no one. At the time, the official argument was that you can't have "nancy boys" in positions where security might be compromised by blackmail. The solution, of course, is simple. Make it all perfectly public and legal in the first place.