The Imitation
Game
In 1951, two policemen, Nock and Staehl,
investigate a break-in at the home of mathematician Alan Turing, whose suspicious
behaviour and absence of war records causes Nock to believe that Turing may be
a Soviet spy. The police send a man to follow Turing into a pub, where he hands
an envelope to a male prostitute, who is arrested shortly afterward
and confesses that Turing is a client. Staehl is ready to charge
Turing with gross indecency, but Nock is still convinced that Turing is a spy, and
begs Staehl to let him interrogate Turing for half an hour, whereupon the latter begins to disclose his top-secret
activities during the war.
In 1939, after Britain declares war on
Germany, Turing is accepted by Commander Alastair Denniston, of the Royal Navy,
for a code-breaking job at Bletchley Park, working alongside Hugh Alexander,
John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards. They are
instructed to break the Enigma codes that the Germans use to encrypt their
communications, which, as Maj Gen Stewart Menzies of MI6 explains, allows them
to attack British and American shipping, leading to famine and the loss
of life.
Turing works in isolation from the others,
to the disappointment of his colleagues, and he concentrates all of his
efforts in creating a decryption machine, instead of decoding by hand. When Denniston refuses to
fund the machine's construction, Turing writes to Winston Churchill, who
arranges the funding and names Turing as the team leader. Turing immediately
fires Furman and Richards, who are linguists
rather than mathematicians, and orders the others to construct the machine with
him.
There is a
flashback to 1928 when Turing was in the boys-only Sherborne School, where he
was bullied by other
pupils but was rescued by a boy named Christopher
Morcom. The latter introduces him to recreational cryptography and arouses Turing's romantic feelings, but dies after
the spring break from bovine tuberculosis, leaving Turing scarred.
Turing's team, which needs more people,
places a crossword puzzle in the
newspaper and conducts a mathematical examination for candidates, eventually
selecting Joan Clarke and Jack Good. Clarke is prevented by her parents from
working with an all-male team, so Turing asks her to become one of the telegraph clerks, who are female, and conveys cryptographic materials to her
living quarters in secret.
The machine is eventually finished, and
Turing names it 'Christopher', but it takes too long to execute, whereas the ciphers of Enigma are changed on a daily basis. Denniston orders the
machine to be destroyed and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers threaten to
quit. Denniston relents and says he will give the team one month to
decode an encrypted German message with the machine.
During this time, Clarke's parents pressure
her to leave Bletchley because she is unmarried and alone, and they want her
home, so Turing proposes to her so she can stay. At the engagement party,
Cairncross advises Turing he is aware of his homosexuality, but
warns him to keep it from Joan due to the risk of being caught. During an evening at a local pub, Hugh begins to
flirt with a colleague of Joan's named Helen. As they flirt, Helen jokes how
she has a crush on a German but cannot pursue him, because she suspects he has
a girlfriend based on the messages. Turing asks how she knows, and Helen clarifies
that because the messages start with the same word, she suspects that must be
someone's name. Because of this, Turing realises that the machine can be sped
up by prerecognising routine phrases such as "Heil Hitler" and others
from daily weather reports, and the recalibrated machine starts to quickly
decode transmissions. However, the team realises that, should the Royal Navy
act on the new information, the Germans may realise the Enigma code is broken
and redesign it, thereby voiding the team's work.
As such, the team conceals the success of
the machine from Denniston and delivers the results to Menzies, who uses his
influence to prevent the team from being fired. Menzies works with the team to
determine which pieces of information can be used while arousing the least
German suspicion. Around this time, Turing discovers that Cairncross is a
Soviet spy, but Cairncross argues that the Soviets are allied with the UK and
threatens to expose Turing's homosexuality if he
tells anyone.
Turing finds Menzies in Clarke's home,
suspecting her of being a spy. When Turing reveals that the spy is Cairncross,
Menzies explains that he already knew and has been using Cairncross to leak
information of low importance.
Shortly afterwards, fearing that Clarke is
in trouble because of her secret involvement with the team, Turing reveals to
her that he is a homosexual, hoping to drive her away. She is unfazed by this,
and Turing lies that he has never cared for her. They break up, but she refuses
to leave.
As the war ends, Menzies tells the team to
destroy all of their work and never speak of their achievements to the world.
In 1951, back in the interrogation room,
Nock is stunned by the story and says that he cannot judge Turing. However,
Staehl has the charges pressed, and Turing is given a choice of two years in
prison or chemical castration; Turing chooses the latter. He is visited at home
by Clarke, who witnesses his physical and mental deterioration. She comforts
him by saying that his work saved millions of lives.
In the end, the team is shown in 1945
burning all of their documents, and a caption reveals that Turing committed
suicide in 1954, aged 41.
Web address: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
Introduction Analysis:
What: British cryptanalyst Alan Turing , who decrypted German intelligence codes for the British government during World War II.
Who: Alan Turing
When: World War II
Key
words:
mathematician 數學家
gross indecency嚴重猥褻
mathematician 數學家
gross indecency嚴重猥褻
interrogate審問
disclose透露
disclose透露
encrypt加密
decryption
machine解密機
bovine
tuberculosis牛結核病
crossword
puzzle填字遊戲
cryptographers密碼學家
homosexuality同性戀
