"The Imitation Game": Fine Movie; Distorted History

Film-fan me loved "The Imitation Game." The me who knows something about World War II felt that "The Imitation Game" was a bit of an unfortunate farce.

Aesthetically "The Imitation Game" is like a hundred other movies about British people dressed in attractive but muted woolens who march about speaking about God and country and occasionally dropping their civilized masks and giving play to their violence or their lust. We've seen all this before: the vintage clothing, the vintage cars, the vintage architecture, the golden lamplight on vintage interiors. We've seen it on Masterpiece Theater and Merchant Ivory and Jane Austen films and Downtown Abbey which I've never watched but which I feel as if I have watched.

"The Imitation Game" is also like a lot of bio pics.

I really do wish "The Imitation Game" had some aesthetic surprises up its sleeve.

"The Imitation Game" treats very complicated subject matter: the breaking of an unbreakable code. I wanted the movie to tell me something about this topic that I didn't already know. The film just puts an enigma machine on a table and has a bunch of smart characters stare at it and announce that it can produce one hundred fifty followed by eighteen zeroes variations. Okay, but how? Give me something technical. The movie never trusts its audience, or its own storytelling skills, enough even to scratch the surface of the nuts and bolts of code-breaking.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives a fine performance as the film's version of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who helped to decode Germany's Enigma during WW II. In the film, Turing displays symptoms of Asperger's. He doesn't get jokes and he has few friends. Everyone is mean to him. He lives an isolated life with only one significant human companion, his school chum Christopher. Turing is awkward and superior with his fellow codebreakers, and they hate him. He is light years more advanced than they. If only they could appreciate his brilliance! Turing is regarded with suspicion by his superiors. They almost arrest him. They break into and search his home. Again, this all feels hackneyed.

Enter Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). Joan is a gifted code-breaker. Like Turing, she too faces difficulties because of others' ignorance and prejudice. People don't realize that a woman can be a worthy code-breaker and they keep her back and put her down.

Joan encourages Turing to overcome his Asperger's symptoms and to befriend his coworkers. He does so.

A casual comment by a secretary, that each German message ends with the words "Heil Hitler," leads Turing to have the Aha moment that breaks Enigma. His jubilation is short-lived. He realizes that he can't rescue an English ship because if he does so, the Germans will realize that the English have broken their code. Turing devises a mathematical method to determine when to use information gathered from breaking the code, and when not to.

Two other timelines are intertwined with the WW II timeline. We are shown Turing's schooldays. He interacts with Christopher, his schoolboy crush and only friend. Christopher departs from his life and Turing is heartbroken. The headmaster of the school is cold in breaking this news to young Turing. Poor little Turing must bear this hard news all by himself.

In the other timeline, also interwoven randomly into the WW II timeline, Turing is interrogated in the early 1950s for "gross indecency" – homosexuality. Turing undergoes chemical castration. This affects his ability to think. He can't even do a simple crossword puzzle in the newspaper. He is a broken man. The film insists that his death was a suicide. Some, including Turing's mother, are not so sure of that.

I was moved by the film. The scenes of little schoolboy Turing are very poignant; it's always hard to watch children suffer. Cumberbatch is a very competent actor and he plays intellectual intelligence well, which is a rare accomplishment. Not many actors could look as smart as Cumberbatch does. He is convincing as someone with Asperger's.

The me who knows and cares something about accuracy in a film "based on a true story" about WW II was very disappointed with this movie.

"The Imitation Game" erases the significant contribution of Polish war heroes and Polish mathematicians to the breaking of Enigma. Like Turing, the Poles were also cruelly and ignominiously betrayed by the very Brits they helped: from Churchill consciously lying about who committed the Katyn massacre to Churchill handing the Poles to Stalin at Yalta to Brits like Stephen Fry insisting that Polish Catholics caused the Holocaust.

It was ideologically convenient for Brits to shaft the Poles, and the Brits did exactly that. "The Imitation Game" erases the Poles because the film wants Turing to be a lone genius and a lone, martyred homosexual. As it happens, during WW II, there were plenty of opportunities for heroism and martyrdom; Turing did not monopolize the supply.

The film is inaccurate in other significant ways. Turing was treated kindly by the headmaster around the Christopher incident, and Turing remained in contact with Christopher's family. Turing proposed to Joan Clarke because he liked her – he even told her he loved her – not to keep her in the code-breaking program. He tried to re-start their relationship years later. Turing could be funny and charming in real life. Etc.

The bottom line is that the filmmakers wanted to create an image of Turing as an isolated genius, unappreciated by anyone, and persecuted because of his homosexuality. In fact Turing was part of a team of other geniuses, and he was open about being gay. I wish the film had been able to tell us more about how a relatively privileged man had been so ill-treated. His working class lover was not chemically castrated, for example. "The Imitation Game," though, is not really interested in probing complex facts, or in saying anything new. 

Please have a look at this previous blog post by Otto here that tells about the Polish contribution to breaking Enigma 

Identity Politics

America is caught up in the reaction to two grand jury verdicts, one involving the police shooting death of Michael Brown, the other involving the death of Eric Garner. My thoughts on both are in the Front Page Magazine article you can read here

Hanukkah Candles in Warsaw's Remaining Jewish Buildings

Hanukkah candles will be lit in Warsaw's remaining Jewish buildings. Story here

A Jewish Woman Gets Bieganski-Style Treatment at an Ivy League Event

source: www.nytimes.com

My good friend Vivian Shnaidman, author of Homicidal Intent, posted a message on Facebook about anti-Semitism.

Vivian told an anecdote that occurred on an Ivy League campus in the US. A Jewish woman was forced to answer for Israeli "genocide" of Arab Muslims.

When I read this anecdote, I felt as if it could have happened to me. On American campuses, I have been put on the spot and forced to answer for Polish genocide against Jews. When I have tried to talk to the people mouthing stereotypes – "You Poles are the world's worst anti-Semites" – I generally discover that my accuser knows nothing of Polish history, in the same way that Vivian's friend's accuser knew nothing of Israel's history.

This is Political Correctness at work. Political Correctness is, inter alia, a pecking order. It's a way of saying, "You are Jewish [or Polish] and so you are lower than I. I will use virtue as a means to put you down and to elevate myself."

Real virtue is not what is at stake. Fake, Politically Correct virtue is what is at stake. Thus, pretend genocides – the pretend Jewish genocide of Arab Muslims, and the pretend Polish Catholic genocide of Jews – are used. Mind – I am not saying that the Holocaust never happened. It did. It was a German, Nazi project. Not a Polish, Catholic one. Of course there were Polish villains, but those villains are not representational of the Polish nation or of Catholicism. They are not I, and I am not them.

Certainly I have never participated in a genocide, and putting me on the spot at a university event, or putting a Jewish woman on the spot at a university event, is not a real act of courage or virtue. It is one-ups-man-ship, and that's what Political Correctness is really all about: I am better than you.

Vivian's post is below:

***

I believe the current anti-Jewish, anti-Israel situation is a result of mass propaganda and of the innate antisemitism of people of non-Jewish descent that has pervaded history since time immemorial. Here is my example.

Yesterday I heard about an incident at a faculty "mixer" at our local Ivy League University. An Israeli acquaintance of mine was invited, in the role of "attractive woman." (She reports that the guest list included geniuses, millionaires, and attractive women, and the seating was arranged in this order).

This woman was seated next to a[n] (I prefer "a" but I am aware that some people do not pronounce the h) historian (a professor - hence a "genius.")

That historian said to this Israeli woman, upon learning she was Israeli: "How do you feel about the terrible genocide your country is perpetrating against the Palestinians?"

This woman was shocked and essentially speechless. She did not want to start a confrontation or draw attention to herself. The seating plan was such that her husband (genius, but her genius) was seated elsewhere, so she was all alone.

She mumbled something about getting his facts straight and that there were no such thing as "Palestinians" before 1967, but she was basically horrified that a HISTORIAN – someone with a coveted tenured position at this world-famous university – was unaware of the history of the little strip of land that in Biblical times through Roman times, and again in modern times, we call "ISRAEL."

That historian was UNAWARE of the fact that the Arabs/Muslims living in that area never had a self-government, never had a political system, never had their own currency, and that genetic studies indicate that many of them are actually of Turkish (Ottoman) descent.

That person was unaware of the first Aliyah, unaware that Jews have always lived in Israel, unaware of the fact that the Arabs were offered a separate state or to remain part of the new invented state of Jordan, unaware that Jordan went to war with Israel in 1967 (along with Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon) and LOST their territory fair and square. Unaware of all these things – why – because the world hates and has always hated the Jews.

If we could map out anti-Jewish activity in Europe and the middle east over the past 3000 years (and I'm sure someone has done this) we would find that once a century something holocaust-like happens. The Nazis were the first ones to have the technology to systematically exterminate Jews, but think about today's technology – 70+ years more advanced. This is how it starts – with invented history and blaming the Jews for things we have nothing to do with.

One final anecdote (because I'm supposed to be writing PSYCHIATRY FOR LAWYERS, not THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS): Right after Obama won the first time in 2008, I was in court in my role of expert witness (nothing to do with Jews or Muslims – a sex offender case). When I came in, everyone in the courtroom was talking about how they were preparing their escape hatch from the US just in case. One religious Jewish attorney was explaining how his wife was Canadian so he was applying for a Canadian passport. The judge was talking about retiring abroad and getting a new citizenship. One psychologist had an Israeli passport.

All of us Jews who were aware of law and history and had good educations (psychiatrists, psychologists, and lawyers) were well aware of the fact that a guy who was raised Muslim until the age of 11 could not and would not be a friend to the Jews or to Israel. The past six years I think have borne this out. And for the Jews who have this fantasy that being anti-Israel is not the same as being anti-Semitic, I will say only one thing: If you don't think you're Jewish, ask your neighbors. Rant over.

***

By the way, I googled Vivian's claim about Turkish genes and found this

And I am mindful that many Jews supported Obama, and continue to support him. 

"With Blood and Scars" by BE Andre

"With Blood and Scars" is a new Polish-themed book by B. E. Andre.

The book has two plotlines. One involves children, and is from the past. One involves a Polish father dying of cancer in modern day England, and his adult child hoping to learn the full facts of his life before he dies.

The book's intriguing title comes from a passage written for Polish children about their own country. How was Poland born? "With blood and scars." 

Here's the book description from Amazon:

"Time is running out for Ania. She needs to ask her dying father a vital question; his answer is the key to how she will lead the rest of her life. She must force him to revisit his childhood in Poland in 1944, a time when decisions about survival were made on the spur of the moment, a place where chaos undermined all previous morality. Who is her father really? Can she bear to find out? 


Another secret also torments her: an incident she filed in her memory store. Now the police have found the remains of a child in Whalley Range. Should she try to find the gang of friends from her own childhood days? Or should she keep the secret of what happened then? This coming-of-age novel is a tale of heroic survival against all odds: a life-affirming story of courage and hope set against harrowing circumstances. It celebrates the goodness that can be found in all nations." 

Japan's Pristine World War II Record

Because if you don't talk about war crimes, and you don't admit to war crimes, and no one pays any attention to your war crimes ... what war crimes? 

From FrontPageMagazine:

"Unlike Germany, Japan never came to terms in any way with its wartime history. The Japanese are fed on a diet of official history and pop culture history which makes them out to be the victims of American aggression. This history typically starts with American planes suddenly bombing Japan for no reason and then concludes with Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

Link follows. Warning: this is a very disturbing article. "Japan Still in Deep Denial" here

"Take For Example Genocide"

I'm posting this here for the capital A Atheist's use of cultural relativism, and for the line "Take for example genocide."