Codebreaker

After having found this obscure docudrama on Netflix I decided to look in at its various reviews on IMDb. My curiosity in the first place came from watching The Imitation Game from 2015 and wondering what else was out there on the subject of Alan Turing. I had read a good deal about him over the years but was unaware that there were several other biopics based on his life story.

Only a handful of reviews on this one, despite the popularity of others? I was intrigued. Ed Stoppard's credits on IMDb fail even to mention it. Was it really that insignificant, or a bad film?

Not at all. It is a fine piece of work, combining fact and fiction in an artful and satisfying way...an excellent accompaniment to The Imitation Game for anyone who found, as I did, the more recent Cumberbatch portrayal mysterious and vague. Codebreaker for all its faults in not going far enough into the science of computing does indeed reflect the real man and those who were integral participants in his life and tragedy. It pulls no punches. Although the role of the psychoanalyst is a throwaway gimmick, I cannot fault the Stoppard performance. It informs cold documentation very well indeed.

Nine out of ten marks without any hesitation.

It seems that people on IMDb didn't like this. I did. I thought it was about a lot more than Alan Turing being gay, and I appreciated seeing this after seeing "The Imitation Game." People keep saying they want more science. A lot of it would go over people's heads.

It states right in the documentary that what made Turing a genius was the fact that, although others had broken the Enigma code, no one had ever broken the German navy code. Turing built a machine to do that.

Turing aLao invented the idea of the computer years before its time, even talking about taking a computer to the park, like a i-phone. The documentary also shows some of his early inventions.

The documentary's conceit is that Turing (played here by Ed Stoppard) is talking with a psychiatrist (Henry Goodman), as he goes over his life. There are interviews with the woman to whom he proposed, Joan, with the psychiatrist's daughters, Turing's nephew, and others.

I think we learn more about Turing than just that he was gay. That he was gay is important because after serving his government and, according to Churchill, shortening the war by two years, he was chemically castrated. Pretty shabby treatment.

The estrogen had an effect on his brain as well. And we know what happened in the end. A sad statement about the way heroes are treated.

I think this is a good companion piece to "The Imitation Game," and I recommend it.

heavy on social indoctrination....

The main reason I tried to watch this film was to learn about Turing's professional accomplishments. Instead, I had to endure for more than 70% of the running time the victimization of Turing.

The guy was a homosexual, and because of it, it seems, it has reached sainthood...

The more interesting questions were never answered: Why was he a genius? How did he decode the enigma machine? Why is he so important for computers and computer sciences?

Did learn anything from it? No, I was only reminded many, many times that Turing was gay...

What a very different place the world would have been where it not for Alan Turing.

Some may say "well someone else would have done it" - but would they? And if so would it have been 10 or 20 years later? If so - skip back to the 1960's now and thats arguably what the world would be like.

This genius invented the modern world that others have now built on. Good to see incredibly talented people coming out to attribute his work to him.

I was disappointed. Instead of learning about Turrings mathematical theories & the various ways in which they helped & improved the world the movie wastes too much time on all of Alan's homosexual romances.