The Imitation Game and my geeky fan-girl moment of the week

Totally geeky moment. Last week when I wrote about Backstrom, one of the stars (Kristoffer Polaha) favorited and retweeted my tweet which was wicked cool because he played John Galt in the 3^rd Atlas Shrugged movie. And as ya’ll know, Atlas Shrugged is my favorite book of all time. So, that was my geek fan moment of the week. And by the way – if you haven’t yet – really – go watch Backstrom. So good.

Now for today’s topic – The Imitation Game. I have no idea how accurate the movie is as far as giving credit to those due for creating the machine that allowed Britain to break the code of the German’s Enigma machine. No clue at all.

What I do know is how great the film was in my humble opinion. It was even better than that if you ask my guy because he’s British and all the stuff that was taking place in the film was reminiscent of his childhood. The film resonated with him on far more levels than it might for an American. But, I thought it was a really good movie. Benedict Cumberbatch was great (as always) and Keira Knightly did a very good job as well. Actually, it was pretty much a stellar cast from start to finish. I’d name all the actors, but it’s a fair list, so I’ll just suggest you see the film instead.  

It’s about a team of British smarty-pants trying to come up with a way to break the Enigma machine  codes so they can win the war. (And please try to imagine if they’d failed and WWII was lost. Actually, Amazon has one episode of an original series they may greenlight called The Man in the High Castle which is based on a Philip K Dick novel and is an alternate history imagining if the Allied powers had lost WWII. It’s disturbing.) So, anywho, the movie is about the trials, triumphs and relationships of this team as they struggle with the problem and even what direction they should invest their time. Very worth the watch.

And now we’re at the part where I have a SPOILER ALERT.

The thing that struck me most was how hard it must have been for this group of people to know all of Germany’s movements and have to make hard choices about which ones they could or could not stop without giving away the fact that they’d broken the code.

Think about that for a moment. Really. We’re at war and the opposing country thinks their coded messages are all secret-like, but we don’t want them to know we know, so we let them blow up a ship that will kill hundreds or thousands so that we can act as though we just got lucky when we stop them in another attack that will save thousands or more or just a really strategic location. So, daily we have to make the decision of who lives and who dies so that we can end a war sooner than later. Tough stuff.

I don’t know how I would live with that kind of burden and responsibility pressing down on me.  I think it would take incredibly strong people with a big picture view to handle that. Which makes me think of that Jack Nicholson scene in A Few Good Men where he shouts , “You can’t handle the truth!” Could the majority of us handle the truth of what is done in the name of our freedom? Something to think about.

The other thing that stayed with me was how horrible homosexuals were treated back then. How awful that we ever came up with chemical castration – just for being gay. Like slavery, sexism and racism (and more), I find the past a hard pill to swallow sometimes. Hard indeed to take how inhumane we can be to one other.  Cruel and sad.  Just saying.