Benedict Cumberbatch in "The Imitation Game"

[Carol the Dabbler]

But the devil lies in the details, and one cannot simply sit back and erase years of research, along with hundreds of others dedicated to  WWII uboat history specialists and amateurs, simply because the scriptwriter is too lazy to check up on such an easy thing to find like the casualty list of ships for August 1941 when he has done such good work elsewhere. But I guess he is just sloppy in some ways. Did you notice how the detective uses corrector fluid when he wants to find out about the elusive, prickly professor? Well, the stuff was developed in 1951, but was available for commercial use in 1956, by which time his quarry had died.

OK, I think I finally see where you're coming from.  You're not actually calling it a bad movie, you're saying that due to your extensive knowledge of the history, you had trouble watching it due to the fudging.  So the "devil ... in the details" here is your own personal devil.

 

I know what you mean.  It really bugs me when a television program has something like Moriarty's computer key code, except that it's supposed to be real -- even though there's no way that it could be.  (I was absolutely delighted when Moriarty's code turned out to be a hoax!)

 

Dunno as I'd call the screenwriter "lazy," though -- as Fox pointed out, there may have been a very good reason that he could not use the name of an ship actually involved at that time -- or perhaps a very good reason why he chose to use the Carlisle, despite the inaccuracy.  (For example, maybe it was a personal salute to a family member who was killed in the bombing of the Carlisle.)

 

[joanneta1]

Dear Carol,

It is a brilliant film, beautifully crafted, I cannot repeat enough times that I went to the première, watched enthralled up to t h a t particular point, then just fumed and could not enjoy or empathise with the rest of its historical content, so I went back a week later determined to enjoy it and,  as I have mentioned in the thread about moments of crying, both times the end is so moving that I felt my chest tighten and a lump in my throat. The other Sherlock moment is right at the end, when he notices her engagement ring, so like TEH with him and Molly!

[Arcadia]

Could you please define "true"? In a physical, factual, metaphysical, theological or philosophical sense?

Anna, I suspect that's one of those things that either makes sense to you -- or it doesn't.  But if it's any help, I think of "true" in this case as meaning something like "containing the essence of what happened, the "flavor" if you will, though perhaps not literally as it happened."

 

Yes, that, and also, even if "it" never happened at all, "it" is still true if it reveals a thing that is real.

 

I love the quote because it helps explain why fiction means so much to me; because it reflects and/or illuminates the human experience in ways that a straight listing of facts does not.

 

I tried to track down the origin of this saying (no luck) but the first time I remember encountering the concept was in a literature course, when reading John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday" (a lovely book, btw) ... only he phrased it this way ....

 

"There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.”

[Arcadia]

ADDED: It occurs to me that may be why I like Season 3 so well ... factually, most of it is rather preposterous! But it's still about things that are true, such as love and betrayal and sacrifice and friendship, and those kinds of things are more interesting to me than facts. Not that facts can't be cool things too....

 

 

[joanneta1]

Dear Arcadia, fiction is fiction, and facts are facts, and I try not to mix one with the other if at all possible. I have always given Steinbeck, Miller and O' Neill as wide a berth as possible, excepting the Grapes of Wrath. I love The Great Gatsby, but F. Scott Fitzgerald is another one I would not feel comfortable watching a play of or reading an essay or text of. That particular school of American Realism, not really my thing. Strange, at one point I thought you were a Romantic at heart, what with our curly mop near duel and everything!

[Arcadia]

That's fair: fiction is fiction, facts are facts. But the truth isn't tied to either.
 
I didn't realize Steinbeck was considered a realist, or "just" a realist. Whoever came up with that label obviously didn't read Sweet Thursday! :P  But that's as good an illustration as any, I guess, of why it's sometimes perilous to categorize things by labels. "There's always something" that doesn't quite fit!
 
I rather suspect I am indeed a Romantic at heart! (In fact, I hope so!) But I'm pretty sure I'm other things as well. Got to keep everyone guessing, you know.... ;)

[Arcadia]

Cool! PBS NewsHour just finished a report on the petition in Britain to have those convicted of homosexuality pardoned. The guy they interviewed said he thought the movie helped bring attention to their cause ... hope the cast and crew get to learn about this news coverage, would make them proud! (And I loved Mr. Moore's acceptance speech... )

[Arcadia]

And now NBC News is doing the same thing! Awesome.
 
Well, sort of. Not really. Never mind.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Gee and one newspaper movie critic said that while he loved the movie and thought it made a good point about the genius of Turing, his oh so important contributions to the winning of the war, and how well the film handled the issue of his homosexuality, the film was really a couple years to late to be all that relevant. Well, take that Mr Movie Critic. 

[sfmpco]

Very rarely do history and facts unfold themselves sequentially to make a good film.  There are rare exceptions.  People even quibble with facts presented in documentaries.  Everyone is a critic.  Let's not get too AR about TIG.  Ultimately it's meant to be an entertainment and nothing more.

[Arcadia]

...Let's not get too AR about TIG....

AR?

 

 

All Retarded?

Angrily Righteous?

Amply Reticent?

 

:P

 

 

ADDED: Oh, wait, frack, never mind. I just figured it out. Duh. :D

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

(anal retentive)

[Arcadia]

I didn't figure it out fast enough, apparently. :D

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

No problem

[Arcadia]

Cool! PBS NewsHour just finished a report on the petition in Britain to have those convicted of homosexuality pardoned. The guy they interviewed said he thought the movie helped bring attention to their cause ... hope the cast and crew get to learn about this news coverage, would make them proud! (And I loved Mr. Moore's acceptance speech... )

  

Gee and one newspaper movie critic said that while he loved the movie and thought it made a good point about the genius of Turing, his oh so important contributions to the winning of the war, and how well the film handled the issue of his homosexuality, the film was really a couple years to late to be all that relevant. Well, take that Mr Movie Critic.

 

And tonight it's all over the major news outlets.

[sfmpco]

Ben reading an Alan Turing letter:

 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Read very well. A lot of care taken just like Louise did with the one she read.

[Arcadia]

Some of you might find this interesting: a recently revealed notebook written by Turing just sold at auction for $1 million to anonymous buyers. Here's the most legit news report I could find: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/13/399395029/alan-turing-notebook-sells-for-more-than-1-million-at-auction. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign, according to Bloomberg.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

That has made headlines in several news feeds. Thought it pretty interesting.

[sfmpco]

Some of you might find this interesting: a recently revealed notebook written by Turing just sold at auction for $1 million to anonymous buyers. Here's the most legit news report I could find: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/04/13/399395029/alan-turing-notebook-sells-for-more-than-1-million-at-auction. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Human Rights Campaign, according to Bloomberg.

 

Wondering if Ben got it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hmm, hadn't thought of that -- but it does seem possible.

 

[Boton]

Well, we finally saw TIG this weekend, once it rose to the top of the Netflix queue.  I have to say, while I liked the movie and thought the acting, cinematography, and score were excellent, there were two things that really bothered me about it.    And I know this is the "BC in TIG" thread, and I'm not sure that either of these are his fault, but they impacted my enjoyment.

 

First, I am sick to bloody death of the trope of the genius who has no ability to understand human interaction and who functions more like a machine than a person.  I mean, it's fine to play with that once in a while, but every report I've read suggests that Turing was very personable and got along well with others.  The choice to portray him as someone with few feelings for others and a soul that could only rely on statistics rather than emotions rankled, especially since it seems the script took pains to de-emphasize how correct that approach can be in times of war.

 

 

For example, Turing looked like a heartless person for wanting to stop the German attack on the carrier force (?) once they had succeeded in breaking Enigma, but then the final notes in the movie mentioned that having the bombe working and consistently breaking Enigma code may have saved 14 million lives. No matter how much it hurts, it was more important to save 14 million people over a period of years than 500 or so in a single attack. Lots of choices of that type were made in WWII; the atom bomb project, of course, leaps to mind.

 

 

Second, I felt like this was two different movies.  One of them was the story about how a crew of mathematicians on the UK side participated in the development of the bombe, which was instrumental in ending the war and, not incidentally, in starting modern computing.  The second movie was about how a brilliant mathematician was victimized by his own government for his sexual orientation in spite of the fact that he had done so much good for his country and for the world.  I really wanted one of those movies or the other, but not both.  I told my husband that I went into the movie thinking, "Oh, I love Alan Turing!  He did so much good work on the bombe and modern computing and the Turing test.  I didn't know he was gay."  I came out thinking, "Oh, Alan Turing is a gay icon who had an unhappy young crush that kind of scarred him for life and hey, he was pretty important in developing the bombe."  Personally, I'll be going back to my original impression of him.

 

Wow, that was all pretty grumpy of me, wasn't it?  I mean, the movie did try very hard, but it just missed the mark for me, and I let my expectations get too high, I guess.  Oh, well.  BC and KK and AL were all very good, at least.

[Carol the Dabbler]

I agree with pretty much everything you said, Boton.

 

Seems like anyone trying to make a movie out of Turing's life and/or the code-breaking effort is going to run into the same problems, though.  There's simply too much material to be handled in a single movie, and yet you can't just ignore huge portions of it -- so you end up simplifying the hell out of it.

 

[sfmpco]

I saw it again for only the 2nd  time last night, and my impression of it remains what it was when I first saw it but for even more of a different reason than Boton mentioned above.

 

I think it's very, very, very difficult for any actor who has to play a character with any kind of tick to shine through that and suspend your disbelief.  As an actress friend of mine calls it, "catching the actor acting."  That's what I felt about BC's Turing.  I felt like he was trying too hard to make sure we understood the ticks that we perhaps lost the humanity of the character.  All I could think was "Oh, here's BC doing a stutter and trying to be socially awkward."

 

When I saw Redmayne do "The Theory of Everything," I was completely  lost in his performance, my belief utterly suspended.  That, of course, was the Oscar-winning performance and with good reason.

 

Honestly, I think BC's Khan was a more believable performance.  I can get lost watching his Khan but not his Turing.

 

But maybe that's just me.

[Boton]

I saw it again for only the 2nd  time last night, and my impression of it remains what it was when I first saw it but for even more of a different reason than Boton mentioned above.

 

I think it's very, very, very difficult for any actor who has to play a character with any kind of tick to shine through that and suspend your disbelief.  As an actress friend of mine calls it, "catching the actor acting."  That's what I felt about BC's Turing.  I felt like he was trying too hard to make sure we understood the ticks that we perhaps lost the humanity of the character.  All I could think was "Oh, here's BC doing a stutter and trying to be socially awkward."

 

When I saw Redmayne do "The Theory of Everything," I was completely  lost in his performance, my belief utterly suspended.  That, of course, was the Oscar-winning performance and with good reason.

 

Honestly, I think BC's Khan was a more believable performance.  I can get lost watching his Khan but not his Turing.

 

But maybe that's just me.

 

It's not just you.  

 

And, like I've said before, I'm really protective of my Khan.  If BC had screwed up Khan, I probably would never have allowed the time to watch Sherlock. (And I can't believed I just typed a statement that nerdy.)  But he did it.  He added a layer to a character who was already intelligent and strong and situationally pragmatic if not outright amoral.  So I know he can do it.

 

But I agree that somewhere between his interpretation of Turing and maybe the direction he was given, we got a portrayal of someone who was supposed to "act smart."  And that wouldn't have required nearly the number of behavioral ticks that this Turing seemed to have.

 

Oh, well.  It was a good movie.  It just wasn't a great movie and wasn't the movie I wanted about Turing or Enigma.