The Imitation Game

Many of you may have seen The Imitation Game in the theaters lately or saw that it has been nominated for several Oscars.  I recently saw the film and was instantly curious about the historical accuracy of the film.  I did a little research on Alan Turning and Enigma to find out how true the plot was.

       Alan Turing                                   Benedict Cumberbatch playing Turing          

A little background, Benedict Cumberbatch plays a cryptographer named Alan Turing, who worked at Bletchley Park in London, that is working to crack the Nazi code dubbed Enigma.  The code was said to be unbreakable and had 159 million possible combinations each day, since the code would change daily.  Turing is a closeted gay man, and would be sent to prison if he is outed.  The movie follows Turing's journey to construct a machine that would be able to break Enigma while struggling with his homosexuality.

The film largely discredits many of the other people who helped create the machine used to break Enigma.  For staters, the movie calls the machine "Christopher" instead of "Bombe" which was the original name of the machine.  Also, the film makes it seem that Turing almost single handedly built and programmed the machine, when in reality a group of Polish cryptographers created "Bombe".  Turing's innovations to the machine allowed it to be able to break the code faster by searching for specific letter combinations.  Another man, named Gordon Welshman, was not mentioned in the film, but also collaborated with Turing.

 Inside "Bombe"                                Outside "Bombe"

Even Turing's personality is not accurate.  Cumberbatch plays a man who is humorous and brilliant, but is largely exaggerated to the point of portraying Turing somewhere on the autistic spectrum.  In a biography, Turing was described as shy, eccentric, and impatient, but not narcissistic as he is portrayed in the film.

Keira Knightly's character, Joan Clarke, was fairly accurate.  She really was a women who was hired to work at Bletchley Park by Gordon Welshman.  For those of you who haven't seen the film yet, I won't spoil what happens to her and Turing.  For those who have, what does happen between them was true, even if the reasons are different than the ones shown in the film.

I just highlighted on a few main points from the film, but if you are interested to see more about the historical accuracy of The Imitation Game, feel free to see the full article in the link here.  I highly recommend the film for anyone who is interested in still seeing in theaters.