"Enigma" is one of the most brilliant films I have ever seen. Not only the complicated plot (based on the book by Robert Harris), but the way it is directed along with the excellent performance of the actors, compose a very impressive result. Every scene has a subtle meaning, every look of the actors is significant, every scene has its own tale to narrate. Until the very end, the director (Michael Apted) brilliantly guides the audience and reveals secrets of the long woven riddles. "Enigma" justifies its title through the film but does not let the viewer down. The solutions do come and they are unexpected.
What distinguishes this film from the normal detective ones is that it is much more complete. Romance, danger, frustration, nostalgy, war, spies, love, wits and mystery are components of equal importance that enrich the film in a unique fashion.
The plot is about an english mathematician (Tom) during the second world war that managed to brake the Shark Enigma, a code used by the germans to communicate. What really adds to the atmosphere of this film is that it narrates the past as an equally exciting adventure that interacts with the present and dominant story. We cannot comprehend the actual adventure without the bits and pieces of information and emotion that the scenes of the past full of nostalgy reveal.
Tom had a nervous breakdown due to the woman he loved and returns to the Bletchley Park after being treated. The Bletchley park is the place where all messages are decrypted and analyzed, thats where the Shark Code broke. The germans change the code unexpectantly, his ex-girlfriend disappears and a number of mysterious facts make Tom and the roomate of his ex-girlfriend believe that there is something very serious going on. Together they break a number of security rules to find out more about the codes, their common friend, political crimes and spies. This developes into an exciting adventure when at the same time war breaks and the codebreakers desperately need to break the new one.
I dont want to spoil this so if you want to find out what happens you have to get the dvd ;).
4 comments:
That sounds like a great movie the way you describe it. I know as a child I was fascinated by secret codes. I had these code templates they gave away in Pop Tart boxes and used them to communicate with my classmates. Also, I was always trying to solve those newspaper cryptography puzzles. Later, when I read that Sherlock Holmes story about the secret code ("The Adventure of the Dancing Men") I worked out the entire code on paper and began using it myself to write stuff down. But since no one wanted to communicate with me this way I was just writing stuff down for myself.
:) Jeremy Brett. The saturday newspaper comes with Sherlock Holmes and I collect these DVDs. I also saw the episode with the dancing men. Codes are also used to communicate with the computer, I wonder if all computer people are attracted to codes and mystery.
Back when they first came out with personal computers I had this simple little TRS-80. You could program basic with it. I wrote a program that looked into memory and displayed a listing of the program that was currently being run. It wasn't very useful, though, because all it could do was print itself. But deciphering how the program was stored was like breaking a code.
Now that I read it again, it means you wrote a program similar to HijackThis! Nowadays and due to all the security risks, its is very useful to know all active processes.
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