MUTUC, MARIEL M.

BSED-I (ENGLISH)

THE IMITATION GAME

Characters:

1. Alan Turing

He was the protagonist in the movie “The Imitation Game”.

He was a brilliant British mathematician who took a leading role in breaking Nazi ciphers
during WWII.
In his seminal 1936 paper, he proved that there cannot exists any universal algorithmic
method of determining truth in mathematics, and that mathematics will always contain
undecidable propositions.
Alan Turing was an English mathematician. During World War II, he was a code-breaker
with whom both Rachel Jensen and Toshiko Sato's grandparents worked.

2. Christopher Morcom

He was an artist.
Soon a deep attachment bloomed between the boys, and Alan developed a purportedly
unspoken crush.
But in February of 1930 Christopher died unexpectedly of bovine tuberculosis, an illness
which he had contracted years earlier from tainted milk.

3. Joan Clarke

Joan Clarke, a brilliant Cambridge educated mathematician, who became one of Turing's
key allies at Bletchley Park, despite battling against inherent sexism from her bosses –
and became engaged to Turing.
 4. Hugh Alexander

British chess champion. Hugh Alexander; Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander in

The Imitation Game.
Like many of the codebreakers, he had a first in mathematics from Cambridge, but he
found himself in Hut 6 in 1940 thanks to his brilliance at chess.

5. Stewart Menzies

Stewart Menzies, the chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service, and John
Cairncross, a Soviet spy, are two historical figures who appear in The Imitation
Game despite the fact that neither worked closely with Turing.

Plot of the Story

All around him is strewn the paraphernalia of chemistry lab experiments. Turing is
disdainful of the cops and tells them that there is nothing to investigate. He is then
introduced to the fellow code-breakers he will work with by Maj.
People respond and they are given another cryptic problem to solve in five minutes flat.
Joan is late for this second test but is allowed to sit for the test after barging in. During his
engagement party however, Turing had confessed to John that he is homosexual. They
crack the codes and are jubilant.
He is refused. Stewart and tell them that they have to only use the information obtained
from the 'Christopher' machine selectively to protect their cover. Turing also discovers
that John is a double agent, supplying information to Stalin.
He also is unable to find any of Turing's war records. He obtains a classified file, but
finds the envelope empty. After calling in Turing to the police station, Nock hears out
Turing's extraordinary story for the first time and is gobsmacked. He has been prescribed
oestogen hormone medication to 'cure' his homosexuality and lives in isolation.
Conflict of the Story

Being misunderstood and rejected by people because of the peculiarity during his college
years, Turing closes himself from the world, except one friend. The film brightly shows
main character’s communication difficulties and his inability to collaborate in a team.
I found it very interesting to analyze the development of the relationships between Turing
and other people in the movie, how he confronts and deals with life and communication
difficulties, and also Turing’s personality. The film’s thread of society’s suppressing on
Alan and, eventually, death from it, also shows an inability of the society to accept
extraordinary individuals.

The Resolution of the story

I wish the movie had shown a bit more of the homophobia in 1950s Britain. Did we need
a sympathetic policeman at the time of showing his persecution? Probably, not. Did we
need to see the "lewd action" he was arrested for.
Maybe. I wanted more hammering of the injustice that the British government and
judicial system level against Turing. But I get it. The balance is there. Yes I would've
liked to see more time devoted to how he dealt with the last chapter in his life.
But maybe that would have taken away from spending more time showing us how he got
to be a hero in the first place, Maybe in this day and age we should expect more. I'm all
for Alan Turing's name heard around the world. And I think this movie represents him
well while thrilling and entertaining the audience. It is not the movie everyone wanted;
but it's a great movie on its own terms.

Own impression of the movie

The movie got me interested in the way they see Alan with his sexuality. I’m sad that
after all he did, he ended up killing his self. I got happy when they broke the enigma
because the efforts of Alan and his team paid off. Also, I love the scene where Alan is not
fond having or interacting to people, but after Joan taught him to be friends with his team
 Alan was able to be close with them. The tragic happened in the movie move me to tears
that Alan don’t deserve what he ended up in his life.
The movie taught me a lot of lessons in life. Trust the process. Do not close yourself and
know how to be friendly (well in times that you need to). Be a good listener, it is
teamwork after all that’s why you work as a team. Be true to yourself despite of
hindrance happening in your life.

Cryptography and Enigma

As I understand the movie, Alan and Christopher are friends in their school when they
were young. Christopher introduced the book called “A Guide to Codes and Ciphers” to
Alan. He thought that Alan can understand the meaning of that but he said that it is a
“secret message”, Christopher disagreed and he told him that “it is not secret messages, it
is messages that could see but no one knows what they mean unless you have the key”. In
the movie, Alan is a homosexual person and he got interested to Christopher that is why
he started learning the cryptography and they used it to send a message to each other.
On the other hand, Alan used the Bombe machine, his own envisioned. These Polish
Bombe machines succeeded thanks to a flaw in German encryption, which double-
encrypted the first three letters at the beginning of each message, allowing codebreakers
to search for patterns. Much of how those Bombe machines worked remains a mystery,
but by using six bombe in parallel, the Enigma Ringstellung (the positioning of the
coding ring) could be detected in a couple of hours.
Using the intelligence provided by the Poles, He set about cracking the Enigma messages
with his own computer. His methods were based around the assumption that each
message contained a crib - a known piece of German plaintext at a familiar point in the
message.
He met someone whom with his fiancé, Joan, and she said something that got the
attention of Alan. He shouted and told the lady to repeat what she said “CILLY” and
there, a secret message go in the mind of Alan and rushed to go in their office to decode
the letters.
Finally, they got the message behind it and broke the enigma. Because of that, they
shortened the war by more than two years and saving over 14 million lives