Finally, a better way to recognise him - instead of Benedict Cumberbatch's criminally inaccurate 2014 portrayal - or that renamed road on the MS campus - or the great British tradition of a park bench...
Nope. He didn't. Just the way pop culture likes their nerds to act.
It did dumb down in some horrible areas however. There was a overdone conflict between him and his superiors and peers - until they too realised he was right in Hollywood fashion. The actual code breaking was ... "my god what if they put Heil Hitler at the end of each message. We could use the new computer you have built to break the message and then put the play on right here."
But to be fair I don't think even I would have sat through ten minutes of Cumberbatch explaining cipher theory to get a proper grip on that.
Overall, its a good way to introduce the kids to the origin of computers, the need to stick to your principles, and prejudice is bad.
They have him say "boy" but they never clarify that the "boy" was 19 years old. I have little doubt that some people left the movie thinking that Turing was a pedophile.
Christopher was the name he gave to the first Bombe I think.
I don't think any part of the film implied pedophilia - not at all.
NB - all above is from memory.
I'm also speaking from memory, but I remember being pretty upset that they weren't more explicit about his crime being strictly homosexuality and not about the partner's age.
I found the clip on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RQBPs5Dkzg
The only actual description of his crime, if I recall, was that single sentence: "[...] accused of intriguing a young man to touch my penis [...]" at about 50 seconds into that clip.
I don't know. Maybe not everyone would interpret that description badly, but it doesn't even sound consensual to me. It sounds like he's describing himself as being accused of manipulating a child.
And the pain that Turing had later in the film/in his life - I felt that too. Cumberbatch's weird self, and the overbearing lone/nerd vibe they gave Turing aside, they tried to convey the pain and sadness and I think it was portrayed enough for the audience to feel it and sympathize.
Could be argued that the film contributed to this path that he's now going to be on the banknote perhaps?
I'm not showing off, and I don't mean to say my opinion is correct, but let's just say I have at least some claim to know what was going on.
I watched the Imitation Game with my wife who knew little to nothing about Bletchley park and Turing. I have to say, that given 90 minutes I couldn't have done a better job in giving them a good feel for the situation and the pressures, the ideas and personalities involved.
I can say with confidence that pretty much everything said or shown in every scene is significantly inaccurate, but taken as a whole, and with an understanding of the restrictions, it's a very good job.
If you can't live without knowing the specific truth, read Hodges. If you can, just watch the film then get on with something else.
Sincerely, I do defer to you for your opinion of Turing's personality - but when I saw the film it was so very disappointing that Turing was written as a lone-genius type - while it didn't drive the plot, I understand it really wasn't what he was like as a person. Come to think about it, I can't think of any mainstream cinema production that portrayed a leading academic as a _normal person_ - they invariably fall into stock character tropes, and The Imitation Game was no exception. That's what disappointed me the most.
Additionally, like many other historical biographies, the film condenses multiple people - or in this case, entire teams of people into single characters. I can understand that for budgetary and storytelling reasons, but the film's decision to substitute Turing's circle of literally a handful of characters for what would have been hundreds of cryptographers and researchers (out of a Bletchley Park workforce of almost 10,000 people concurrently in early 1945!) was enough to break the film for me - and even if that fudging wouldn't have made me take issue with the film the scenes where Turing-and-Chums single-handedly make moral decisions about the handling of high-level intelligence certainly did. Those scenes added nothing of historical value and would have added emotional tension only to viewers entirely ignorant about how military intelligence gathering and analysis works - which, unfortunately, seems to include the film critics.
Police officers end their phone conversations abruptly, academics are lone genius, managers consider their employees as slaves, chefs dedicate their life to their art...
Cinema has its codes, good or not, so you shouldn't really expect them to not be there I think !
In 1939 the Poles basically dumped an absolutely massive amount of information they had worked out about enigma on the British and the French. The Poles had a working system to decrypt enigma from (I think) 1932 up to 1939 when the Germans added more rotors to the machines increasing the complexity significantly. The Polish techniques still worked with the new rotors but the additional complexity slowed them down a lot.
I maybe remembering this incorrectly but I think the Poles managed to construct machines logically identical to enigma machines (i.e. the same output for every input) based just on messages they'd intercepted (without ever seeing an actual enigma machine). They gave one of these machines to the French and one to the British.
The "Bombe" built in Bletchly park was directly inspired by the Polish "Bomba" machines.
I've never watched the movie, having also spent a bunch of time working with the Turing Archive's collection of his other work (he was really interested in morphogenesis, a corner of biology) as a side job when I was at postgraduate student I expect I'd just find the portrayal annoying.
As for scarcely different - Churchill is an idol to the current government, and their regressive policies, their proposal to reintroduce the death penalty, their isolationist nationalism - all of these are things I’m sure he would support.
Like a corporation, that government definitely feels bound by the obligations made by its predecessors, and, likewise, feels entitled to receive any obligations owed to it.
To argue otherwise would be to argue that debts, treaties, as well as all prior legislative and executive decisions all disappear every time you hold an election.
Governments are composed of people: people inherit money and associated debt but they don't inherit guilt.
The UK's recent actions towards Turing were very much not an apology, however.
Nearly all repression was the law of the land at the time it was carried out. If the German or Russian, or American government 'forgave' the ethnic groups it's predecessor mistreated, there would be an incredibly justified uproar about it (Because as the transgressor, the government should be the one asking for forgiveness, not giving it. And for two of them, it would not even a direct successor of the government responsible!)
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/12/12/boris-johnson-tank-top...
It seems to me that it would have been more appropriate for it to have officially asked for his forgiveness, instead.