journal features

movie review - The Imitation Game

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2020.02.26

This is a telling of Alan Turing's contributions to the British war effort in the Second World War. It shows how his team broke the encryption code that the Germans were using. It shows in delightful detail the process of turning the concepts into one of the world's first computers, and how that automated system was used to change the outcome of the war. The movie then also details the man's fall from Grace as the miserable culture of the UK punishes him for his homosexuality. This is rarely an easy viewing but it's all taken from historical events and that whole period couldn't have been easy living - it certainly left its mark on my family. I enjoyed the whole thing, and think that anyone interested in the events or in encryption will find it interesting.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner