ENIGMA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
CAPSULE: Dark and complex espionage thriller based on the Robert Harris novel. March 1943 the British lose their former ability to decode German messages to their submarine fleet. They must either get it back or lose an important shipping convoy. An intelligent thriller perhaps a little too reserved to be thrilling. Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)
For thirty years after the end of the World War II Britain's most secret weapon remained secret. Like the US had done with the Manhattan Project, Britain had put many of their best minds onto their own scientific wartime project. What they found could well have saved the war for Britain. At minimum it shortened the war by at least two years by negating the Germans' most effective weapon, the U-boat. The Germans communicated with their men in the field (or in this case the sea) with an incredibly complex code called Enigma. The code was encrypted and decrypted with a device of mechanical and electronic components that created an unimaginably large number of possibilities that has to be considered in decoding the message.
The mathematics necessary for decoding Enigma was considered to be orders of magnitude beyond what any country could accomplish, even if the closely guarded Enigma boxes fell into the hands of the enemy. What the Germans did not know was that an Enigma box had fallen into allied hands and teams of puzzle solvers and mathematicians were recruited for the purpose cracking the code.
The team was installed at Bletchley Park under the direction of Alan Turing. For the first time rudimentary electronic computers were used to search for and test solutions. By July of 1941 the work had already borne fruit and supply convoys from America were saved from submarine wolf packs. It typically took two days to decode a message, but for many of the messages that was short enough time.
Then in February 1942 the code changed. It was still Enigma, but a new order of complexity had been added. The code could not be solved. At the same time the strategy of the submarine packs changed. The Germans could not know how great a setback it was. By December the Allied shipping losses had quadrupled. It took ten months to recover the old capabilities and the Battle of the Atlantic again turned in favor of the Allies. And so it remained.
All this is history. It is history filmmakers have not made much usage of, though code breaking was an important part of World War II. The film U-571 told the fictional story of Americans capturing an Enigma box and set it much later than the British actually did. The film MIDWAY tells a little about the Americans efforts at code breaking. Robert Harris wrote the novel ENIGMA, a mystery story set in and around the Bletchley Park project. Tom Stoppard has adapted the novel into a screenplay and Michael Apted directs.
The premise is that in March 1943, the Germans changed the code again. The British have just four days to break the modified code before an important convoy from New York will be entering waters that may have German U-boats. Without knowledge of where the U- boats are there is no way to avoid these waters. With nary a mention of Alan Turing in the screenplay, sullen mathematician Tom Jericho (played by Dougray Scott) who had left the Bletchley Park project has been brought back onto the project. He had been instrumental in breaking the code the last time, but had since suffered a nervous breakdown. That breakdown was brought on by being rejected by lovely co-worker Claire (Saffron Burrows). She was a fellow project member with whom Tom had fallen in love. Now there is evidence that Claire intentionally broke project security and perhaps was spying for the Germans. Tom has a double problem of resolving the new German code and looking for the now missing Claire. Helping him is Claire's swatty and bookish housemate Hester Wallace (Kate Winslett). Making life even more difficult is sinister and polished intelligence operator Wigram (played nicely by Jeremy Northam).
Tom Stoppard's adaptation is better than one might have expected retaining some reasonable explanation of the history and the mathematical issues involved without obvious expository lumps, though by the end of the film some technical problems are going by too fast to comprehend. Perhaps in deference to Apted the script has some feminist touches that I do not remember from the book. It also has one gratuitous car chase. John Barry has provided a score that is by turns lush and ominous.
An interesting chapter in history could have made for a better thriller, but as it stands it is reasonably exciting if reserved. I rate it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
People interested in the efforts to break the Enigma can find a lot of intriguing material at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/decoding/. This is information to accompany the excellent episode of Nova "Decoding Nazi Secrets." Included is a transcript of that broadcast.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Copyright 2001 Mark R. Leeper
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