This is a very good bio-pic of Alan Turing. By the end you feel like you've learned about someone who did very important things you didn't know about. In fact, the final scenes more or less claim that Alan both won World War Two and invented computers.
However, I did know about Alan Turing, because he was a mathematician and Computer Scientist. I therefore have four minor gripes with the film:
- Turing's interest in thinking computers wasn't really relevant to cracking the Enigma code. The method there was just to use a computer to run through all the millions of possible combinations, using some logic to rule out the impossible ones.
- Keira Knightley mispronounces Euler (a little thing, but couldn't someone have checked?)
- It's claimed that Turing's Universal Machine was a machine to solve all problems; in fact it was more of a thought experiment which demonstrated that any solvable problem can be solved with a very simple computer, it just takes longer.
- They failed to include Turing's most visual eccentricity, that he kept his mug chained to a radiator so no one could take it.
I did enjoy the general mathematical rivalry between the group of super-nerds. There's a good bit where Turing mutters that the Engima machine has one hundred and fifty million combinations. "One hundred and fifty nine million to be precise" says the sexy chess champion. Knightley is also good as the human counterpart to autistic Turing, while also being really clever herself.
The three interwoven stories are all interesting. When Alan is a child and middle aged you mostly feel sorry for how he is mistreated. The main section when he is in his prime at Bletchley Park you get a glimpse of his darker side, where he was actually quite unpleasant. Benedict Cumberbatch (who plays Turing) said of the 2013 public apology that Turing was pretty appalling and he should have been apologising [Edit - I've crossed this out as I can't find the source of the quote and it seems like everything else Cumberbatch said about Turing was very positive, so maybe I've got it wrong - see comments]
The film also provides plenty of social commentary, about sexism, homophobia, paranoia and espionage. So there's tense scenes mixed with funny bits when Turing does something odd or clever. Overall, it's a winner.
