‘Enigma’

British code breakers battle the Nazis and still find time for romance.   [R]

By: Bob Brown
   How’s this for a film plot? A math genius is hired to break secret enemy codes for the military. He falls madly in love with a beautiful woman, but he’s a klutz in affairs of the heart. After losing his mental balance, he is sent away, only to return as a hollow shell of his former self. Meanwhile, he is tailed by an official in the intelligence branch who suspects him of something. The drama looms: Can his brilliance redeem him as he wins the love of an understanding woman?
   No, it’s not a movie starring Russell Crowe, and it has nothing to do with Princeton, MIT or a Nobel Prize. Rather, this is the semi-fictional story of a cryptanalyst on a team of British code-breakers during Word War II. This group of brilliant but socially awkward young men (as portrayed in the film) managed to break intercepted German communications and to keep the Allies one step ahead of the Nazis.

Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott play World War II codebreakers in Enigma.

   This part of the story is true. Although the team began work secretly in Bletchley Park, England, as early as 1941, their mission was not declassified until 30 years later. Their headquarters building was the target of a wrecker’s ball until it was saved by a group of enterprising preservationists, who wanted to turn it into a museum honoring the work of those who served there. The Bletchley Park Trust still seeks donations to stay afloat.
   Enigma is the handiwork of director Michael Apted, best known for his documentary series on British youth, from Seven Up (1963) to Forty-two Up (1998). Tom Stoppard’s screenplay is based on Robert Harris’s best-selling novel. On screen, this spy-thriller romance resembles old-fashioned films that were once popular during and after the war.
   That’s a problem. It has the musty aroma of predictability. And because it involves a classic race against time to save the world, it depends on viewers knowing the stakes along the way.
   Through flashbacks, we see Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott) wrestle with a failed whirlwind romance, trying to discover the mysterious alter-identity of his lover, Claire (the very tall Saffron Burrows). She has disappeared at a crucial moment. Answers are urgent, since both of them were working on sensitive coded communications intercepted from the Nazis.
   Dark circles have formed under Tom’s eyes, the sure mark of someone not to be trusted with Her Majesty’s military secrets. He is booted from the cryptanalysts’ clubby Quonset hut and sent packing to Cambridge. After months stewing there, he is called back to serve as window dressing for visiting admiralty, who want to know how long it will take the group to break the Nazis’ new code scheme, "Shark."
   Unless they do so in a matter of days, a large supply convoy in the Atlantic will be surrounded and sunk by killer subs. Besides that, the war will be fought from the disadvantage of Allied ignorance. Tom has been ordered to look smart and keep his mouth shut. But he can’t help saying what his colleagues are afraid to admit: the time frame is impossible.
   Tom also can’t help trying to rekindle his affair, so he presses Claire’s housemate, Hester (Kate Winslet), for any sign of Claire’s lingering affection. There is little encouragement.
   Meanwhile, they must divert the suspicions of Wigram (Jeremy Northam), a slippery British Intelligence official, who appears at the most inopportune moments. Will their sleuthing keep enough ahead of his so that they discover the secret before being trapped? Will the Shark be broken in time to save the war, if not the convoy? Will Tom find true love? There are enough red herrings to supply a fishmonger’s shop.
   The overlapping plots could keep you on the edge of your seat. However, unless you are a cryptanalyst, the nature of the codes and the methods of breaking them will baffle you. Much pre-knowledge is taken for granted, thus blunting the average viewer’s ability to be involved in the urgency.
   The best things in this film are the incomparable Kate Winslet and Jeremy Northam, with Dougray Scott doing a serviceable near-mad genius, a figure that seems to intrigue filmmakers nowadays. The actual Bletchley Park headquarters, and the room-filling Turing Bombe, precursor to the modern programmable computer, also star. If they’d had one gigahertz laptops back then, the museum might have fit into a small closet, unlike the plots for this tale.
Rated R. Contains a sex scene and language.