I have taken the liberty of verbatim reproducing many of the dialogues from
the film to write this narrative/review. Idea was to just create interest for
as many people as possible to see this film.
*********
As Alan Turing recounts his past, he introspects, What am I? Am I a person?
Am I a machine? Am I a war hero? Am I a criminal?
As he is fading away from life his friend Joan Clarke visits him
Joan Clarke:
This morning I took a train through a city that would not exist if it wasn’t
for you. I bought a ticket from a man who would likely be dead if it wasn’t for
you. I read up on my work, a whole field of scientific inquiry that only exists
because of you. If you wish you could have been ‘normal’, I can promise you, I
do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t.
Alan Turing
Is that what you think?
Joan Clarke
... I think that sometimes it is the very people who no one imagines anything
of who do the things that no one can imagine.
*********
Early on, Alan Turing is hired by the British Intelligence to break ENIGMA,
the greatest encryption device in history, which the German uses for all their
communications.
Alan’s argument is that Enigma is a machine. A very well-designed machine. What
if only a machine can defeat another machine?
His theory is that a machine that can solve any problem. It doesn’t just do
one thing: It does everything.
The machine isn’t only programmable, it’s re-programmable. Human beings can
compute large sums very quickly. He want’s his machine to be Smarter. To make a
calculation, and then to determine what to do next. Like a person does. His
vision includes an electrical brain. A digital computer.
Of course machines can’t think “as human beings do.” A machine is different
from a human being; hence, it would think differently.
The interesting question is, just because something thinks differently from
you, does that mean it’s not thinking? We
allow that humans have such divergences from one another. Somebody may like
strawberries. Someone else hates ice-skating. I may cry at sad films. You
may be allergic to pollen. What does it mean tohave different tastes —
different preferences — other than to say that our brains work differently?
That we think differently from one another? And if we can say that about
each another, why can’t we say the same for brains made of copper and steel?
After breaking ENIGMA, the mathematician that Alan was, developed a system
for determining how much intelligence to act on. Which attacks to stop, which
to let through. Statistical analysis. The minimum number of actions it’ll take
to win the war, but the maximum number they we’re able to take before the
Germans get suspicious.
It is estimated that Alan Turing’s efforts helped truncate the the World War
two by a minimum of two years and about 14 million lives were saved.
The movie is inspiration unlimited. Highly recommended for students and professionals
in all walks of life.
This biopic which is presented as a mystery suspense thriller, is equally
touching. Going by Wikipedia the narrative seems to be a faithful rendition of
Alan Turing’s life. The screenplay has a touch of class, especially the tragic
demise of his friend while at school which converts him into an atheist in real
life is beautifully introduced at the fag end of Alan Turing’s life, the death
that seems to perpetually haunt him. The camera slowly progressing and
capturing Alan Turing’s moist eyes shrouded in anger and disbelief even as he vocally
negates his close relationship with his friend.
And as Benedict Cumberbatch, enacts the ecstasy of breaking the ENIGMA code
and gushes, this is all the German that I need to know, he might have just
sealed his stake for the best actor award for this OSCAR. The complexity of
Turing’s has been so beautifully and subtly nuanced that Cumberbatch seems to
have banished Sherlock from our minds.
This movie needed its star and the screenplay to be perfect. Well they are
just as perfect as they can be.
Alan Mathison Turing, (23 June
1912 – 7 June 1954) was a British pioneering computer scientist, mathematician,
logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, mathematical biologist, and marathon and
ultra distance runner. He was highly influential in the development of computer
science, providing a formalization of the concepts of "algorithm” and
"computation” with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of
a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered to be the father of
theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
Incidentally Alan Turing ran a time of just 11 minutes less than the silver
medalist in the 1948 olympics marathoner !!!
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