Enigma

Code breaking is hard work. Though picks and shovels aren't required, the hours are long and the frustrations constant. The code breaking process is complex, relying heavily on logic, mathematics, and the assistance of computers. Code breakers themselves often are very weird people who make the common nerd seem comparatively normal. Given all this, it's understandable that hardly any films, aside from documentaries, have been made about the lives and loves of code breakers.

Until "Enigma", the one exception was "Breaking the Code", the story of Alan Turing, the mathematician perhaps most responsible for cracking the Enigma. But Turing's story, though psychologically fascinating, has its limitations for conventional film makers, the most obvious being the difficulty in creating dramatic tension and the absence of any female love interest.

Michael Apted's `Enigma' is the first real attempt to tell the story of the Bletchley Park code breakers within the framework of both a thriller and a heterosexual romance. As might be expected given the historical circumstances, the thriller aspects come off as rather subdued and the romance, such as it is, as rather restrained.

Set in the dreary England of 1943, where stiff upper lips were bearing the weight of four years of war, `Enigma' centers on mathematician Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott). His day and night job is code cracking, but Jericho spends much of the film attempting to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his former lover, Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows). Jericho is assisted by the suitably frumpy Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet), but harassed by an elegant MI-5 officer named Wigram (Jermey Northam), who suspects him of both murder and treason.

The disheveled Mr. Jericho and the dowdy Miss Wallace spend much of the film on a last-name basis as they poke through files and try to decode intercepts Claire had in her possession. This leads them off into what seems a blind alley but eventually turns out to be the key to much of the mystery. In the midst of all this, Tom manages to tear himself away long enough to return to work, make a breakthrough, and help his mates recover the keys to a code the Germans had altered, thus changing the course of a critical convoy battle in the North Atlantic.

Slow paced and sometimes dense, `Enigma' is enlivened by Northam's portrayal of Wigram, who has a habit of turning up at inopportune moments and making matters difficult for Jericho. Northam has a lot of fun with this role and he looks great in his suits, providing a sharp sartorial contrast to the drab Jericho-Wallace line of wartime apparel.

Although some critics have compared `Enigma' favorably to works of Hitchcock, Hitch's touch was always lighter and his pacing livelier. And Dougray Scott is not Cary Grant any more than Kate Winslett is Grace Kelly, which is all well and good as this dark, serious film clearly benefits from the use of less glamorous performers.

Historically `Enigma' is reasonably accurate, though only so far as it goes. Alan Turing isn't even given a cameo and the original Polish contribution to the code breaking is barely acknowledged. Unfortunately, the film was not shot at Bletchley Park, some of which still survives, but at various other sites in England and Holland.

Recommended to those interested in code breaking and in World War Two. Others probably will find "Enigma" just that.

You realise how little known Alan Turing was only twenty years ago when you eventually discover he's been transformed into dashing Tom Jericho romantically involved with Saffron Burrows - as Daphne to Kate Winslet's Velma - and not to take this too seriously as history.

As a slick drama with a John Barry score it's enjoyable enough, although it does rather ramble until the final plot development that serves to remind us that it's based on a novel by the same author as 'Fatherland'.

A couple of years ago PBS aired a 2-hour episode of Nova (the American equivalent of the BBC's Horizon) called 'Decoding Nazi Secrets.' It was a fascinating documentary about the work done at Bletchley Park, as well as some material about its American counterpart, Arlington Hall. I had wished it was even longer, for I suspected that what was left out was as interesting as what was included. Among the many memorable characters in the story, none stood out more than Alan Turing, a painfully shy, socially awkward, utterly brilliant genius. I found myself wishing that someone would make a theatrical film about the Enigma code and a film of Alan Turing's life, or both.

Unfortunately, this isn't it. In March of 1943, code-breakers at Bletchley Park discover to their horror that the German navy has changed the code sets used to communicate with U-boats at sea. These were based on the famous and diabolically complex encryption machine known as the Enigma. Authorities enlist the help of a brilliant young man named Tom Jericho (played by Dougray Scott) to help them break the code again. The possibility of a spy within the British code-breakers' ranks is raised, and Tom's love interest, Claire (Saffron Burrows), has disappeared. To solve these mysteries, Tom recruits Claire's best friend, Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet). While investigating Claire's personal life, the pair discovers personal and international betrayals involving the now-infamous Katyn massacre in Poland. Of course, Tom and Hester fall in love.

Dougray Scott actually does bear some physical resemblance to Alan Turing, but there the comparison ends. Turing's sorry, shabby reward for the instrumental role he played in winning the war for Britain was to be persecuted during the Cold War because his homosexuality was viewed as a security risk, to the point that he committed suicide. While 'Enigma' looks good and plays fairly well as a decent espionage film, the viewer who knows the factual background of this piece of fiction will probably be disappointed. The best part for me was the recreation of the physical setting at wartime Bletchley Park, especially the Enigma machines themselves and the famous Bombes, which were invented by Turing (Jericho in the film). These were among the world's first computing machines; they were a stroke of brilliance by Turing: Instead of looking for what a coded message WAS, they operated according to the principle of eliminating what it was NOT. This cut the number of possibilities by better than 90% and greatly simplified the work of the human code-breakers. It is somewhat surprising that this rather wan film is the work of Tom Stoppard and Michael Apted; they have done better.

Purely as a film I give ENIGMA 6 out of 10; as an historical document – zero. Generally I do not necessarily expect a film with an historical content to be a piece of cinematic non-fiction but merely a source of entertainment, so I score it on this basis. If the distributors claim it as a true historical record then that is another matter. Enigma has a fairly good plot but suffers from poor direction and frequently indistinct dialogue. It centres around a young man and a young girl working at the Government's code deciphering establishment at Bletchley Park and their involvement in the breaking of the German U-boat cipher SHARK (or TRITON to give it its original German name). As the mechanics of the breaking of SHARK has little story value a sub-plot involving a femme-fatale as German spy is introduced.

During 1941 our Atlantic convoy losses were becoming unsustainable so the ability to read SHARK was imperative. The film has a section in which the code breakers are shown helping a naval lieutenant to pinpoint the position of U-boats in the Atlantic based on wireless direction finding information. This was not the work of Bletchley Park so is historically wrong. In fact,convoys and U boats were tracked by the Admiralty in London.

The film also purports that breaking SHARK was the sole factor in helping to bring down convoy losses. The truth is somewhat more ironic. Whilst we could not read TRITON/SHARK the Germans could read the Royal Navy Cipher No. 3! However it took us a year to find out. It was this cipher which was used to transmit the rendez-vous points for departing convoys to RN escort vessels in the North Atlantic. The Germans picked this up at their listening stations and promptly re-transmitted it to their U-boat wolf packs who were then able to proceed to the rendez-vous ready to pick off their prey. This information was sent in SHARK so once it was broken we knew that RN Cipher No.3 was being compromised and had to be changed. As a result convoy losses decreased.

The reason for the weakness in Cipher No.3 was that when WWII started the Royal Navy was essentially still using code book methods from the Great War and were very slow to adopt mechanical encipherment, similar to Enigma. On the other hand the RAF introduced it in the 1930s for use on the Defence Teleprinter Network run by the GPO. For this the Type-X machine was developed and was featured in the film for reading German enigma code. The German Enigma machine itself features prominently in the opening sequences of the film with several close-ups and supporting dialogue explaining how it worked.

Did the Germans know that we could read their enigma messages? This is a moot point as officially they did not but both Rommel and Doenitz, the U-boat commander, were highly suspicious; Rommel because convoys from Italy to North Africa were frequently sunk and Doenitz because U-boat code changes only gave him a short term advantage against convoys. In both cases the leakage was blamed on spies, although it has been suggested that Doenitz's staff were very possibly convinced but dare not tell Hitler that Enigma was compromised, so they just contented themselves with improving the system. Unlike the British centralised Intelligence centre at Bletchley Park the Germans had separate intelligence staffs for each of the three services with the inevitable rivalry between them. This weakened their counter intelligence operations which, coupled with the extreme secrecy surrounding Ultra, meant that our success against Enigma went undetected.

The film is well worth seeing for its entertainment value and just a wee peek at the work of Bletchley Park but for anyone interested in learning the truth about this fascinating story I suggest that they read the official history entitled "British Intelligence in WWII" by Professor Sir F. H. (Harry) Hinsley (himself an alumnus of BP), or just Google "Bletchley Park".

Firstly: no, it's NOT a scandal that Alan Turing isn't mentioned. He couldn't be mentioned without being made into a character and given a role in the story - which would mean, among other things, placing him on the list of suspected traitors, at least temporarily, which would either be a slur, or (assuming it wasn't a slur because we'd immediately know him to be innocent) a constraint on the mystery. Throwing in a clearly fictitious genius was the right thing to do. (Turing was the most important, but not the only, genius involved.)

The main problem with "Enigma" is that emphasis is badly misplaced. I was interested in (a) how the war effort was going, (b) whether Bletchley Park would come up with solutions in time, (c) HOW the process of breaking codes was actually carried out, and (d) when Tom would get over his idiotic infatuation with that annoying blonde chick and fall, as any sensible person would, for the dynamic and twenty-times-more-attractive Hester (Kate Winslet). I won't swear that I was interested in these things in that order, but I WAS interested in them to the exclusion of everything else; the mystery subplot involving Claire that for some reason becomes THE plot, was a distraction. Its twists and turns (they come along like clockwork every fifteen minutes) are of the kind you don't even bother trying to follow. You just wait for the next confrontation between Dougray Scott and Jeremy Northam, of which Stoppard's (or Harris's) mechanical sleight-of-hand is just a means of providing. A pity he couldn't have found some other means - or moved Northam's character to a different movie altogether, where he wouldn't take time away from Enigma, Winslet's character, etc.

The film - and the script, too, all things considered - is well put together (intelligent writing, excellent acting and photography), so the Claire subplot makes it a real missed opportunity.