We went to see The Imitation Game yesterday, and it made a big impression on me.  The film, directed by Morton Tyldum, tells the story of Alan Turing’s role in cracking the Nazi encryption machine Enigma during World War II, thereby laying the groundwork for the invention of the digital computer.  I usually rate movies based on how often they come back to me.  This one has never left me, and I have been reading from two books about Turing, Alan Turing: the Enigma, by Andrew Hodges, which inspired the movie, and The Code Book by Simon Singh, one of my son David’s favorite books.

The movie was exquisitely made, with standout performances by Benedict Cumberbatch (who received a nomination for a Golden Globe but not an Oscar), Keira Knightley (her best in my book) and numerous others.  The story was a sad one, describing how a precocious child was bullied and excluded while in private school, but sustained by the friendship of a like-minded companion who then died of tuberculosis. (In real life his parents left him by the age of 18 months, and he was brought up by nannies and relatives until he was sent to boarding school.)

In the movie Turing is a lone voice arguing for the construction of a machine to undo the Enigma code.  In real life it seems that he was respected enough for his previous work that he had a good amount of cooperation from his talented colleagues in constructing his machine, which is considered a precursor to the modern computer.

In addition to the scientific intrigue is the intrigue of Turing’s personal life, in which he was homosexual.  Homosexuality was apparently tolerated in the society of Cambridge University when he was a student, but several years later he let the information slip while being interviewed by the police, and he was charged and convicted of indecent behavior.  He was subjected to hormone therapy which disrupted his life and his ability to function, and finally, at the age of 41, he took his own life.

It is a cruel irony that a man who made such a huge contribution to society should have been victimized by that society’s own narrow-mindedness.  Many authors have since pointed to Turing’s contributions, and he has been called the Father of the Modern Computer.  Although teams of researchers at places like IBM worked furiously concurrent with his work, the name does not seem to be unjustified.  His theoretical work, which dated from 1938, when he was 26 years old, clearly had a profound influence on the entire field.

It seems fitting that this powerful and well-made film should stand as yet another tribute to the seminal efforts of this special, great man.