Codebreaker documentary alan turing biography
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Overview
Ed Stoppard (left) stars as Alan Turing while Henry Goodman plays the role of his psychiatrist.
This feature length drama-documentary records the brilliance – and the destruction – of one of the 20th century’s most important people.
Alan Turing's legacy is one of brilliance and bravery, and "Codebreaker" ensures that his story will not be forgotten.
Codebreaker
A complicated and eccentric genius. That he was gay is important because after serving his government and, according to Churchill, shortening the war by two years, he was chemically castrated.
The documentary also shows some of his early inventions.
The documentary's conceit is that Turing (played here by Ed Stoppard) is talking with a psychiatrist (Henry Goodman), as he goes over his life. A lot of it would go over people's heads.
It states right in the documentary that what made Turing a genius was the fact that, although others had broken the Enigma code, no one had ever broken the German navy code.
Codebreaker for all its faults in not going far enough into the science of computing does indeed reflect the real man and those who were integral participants in his life and tragedy. The conversations between Turing... In World War II, he broke the German Enigma code and helped the Allies defeat the Nazis, and his theories on mathematical biology and artificial intelligence were decades ahead of his time.
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ALAN TURING
Alan Turing is the genius British mathematician who helped save millions of lives by breaking the German naval Enigma code during World War II. He also was the visionary scientist who gave birth to the computer age, pioneered artificial intelligence, and was the first to investigate the mathematical underpinnings of the living world.
These contributors bring Turing’s remarkable impact up to the present day, explaining why, in many ways; modern technology has only just begun to explore the potential of Turing’s ideas.
THE PRODUCTION TEAM
An international production team brings Turing into the 21st Century with fresh evidence, modern perspectives, and new voices.
The conversations between Turing and Greenbaum explore the pivotal moments in his remarkable life and examine the pressures that may have contributed to his suicide.
"Codebreaker" is a film that delves into the life of Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician and cryptanalyst whose work during World War II was pivotal in breaking the German Enigma code. Was it really that insignificant, or a bad film?
Not at all. CODEBREAKER has reached millions of viewers around the world through television, theatrical release (in the U.S.), DVD, digital platforms, film festivals, special screenings, and educational distribution.
It is a powerful narrative that combines factual accuracy with emotional depth, making it accessible and engaging for a wide audience. Alan Turing was a rare genius. This format allows viewers to gain a comprehensive understanding of Turing's character and the challenges he faced. British mathematician Alan Turing was inarguably one of the most influential gay figures of all time, and before he came to life in The Imitation Game, Clare Beavan and Nic Stacey showcased his life as a hybrid drama-documentary.
Turing’s 1936 paper “On Computable Numbers” forms the cornerstone of the modern digital age, creating the theoretical structure for everything computers do today.
Each therapy session in this drama documentary is based on real events. One could make the case, I suppose, that the title is a play on words, referring Turing's breaking of the gentleman's code of conduct, but that's not stated in the film.
I felt like this was pretty much of a loss of an hour or so of my time.
bpladybug
fascinating and heartbreaking bio of a genius
This was a wonderfully crafted biopic about the mathematic genius who cracked the enigma code, wrote a paper laying out in original plan for computers, and studied math and biology in marking in animals and insects.
He was persecuted, arrested, tried, convicted of homosexual acts in a 1950's England which was much like the persecution and ruination of Oscar Wilde.