The Imitation Game (2014)

      The Imitation Game (2014) [D: Morton Tyldum. Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode] A fictionalised version of Turing’s life, focussing on his work at Bletchley Park, where he improved on a Polish code-breaking machine and invented the theoretical basis of the digital computer, and ending with his arrest on charges of gross indecency and the effects of synthetic estrogen on his personality and mind.
     The script emphasises the strained human relationships and emotional costs, and strongly hints that Turing was autistic. It dramatises the research and the conflicts within Bletchley Park, portraying its Commander as a narrow-minded results-focussed martinet who despised academics. The relationship between Turing and Joan Clarke has the ring of truth, despite the use of Knightley to act the part. The producers skim over the math and logic, rightly deciding I think that too much technical detail would cause eye-glazing. But an unfortunate side-effect is a variation on the mad-scientist-geek stereotype: Turing is not normal. I think that many, perhaps most, movie-goers will on the one hand sympathise with the emotional pain Turing suffered, and on the other will feel confirmed in the attitude that science is not for ordinary folk. The victimisation of Turing as a gay man will cause similar mixed responses.
     Having seen Codebreaker (See review of February 24, 2015) I think was an advantage, since it supplied an objective framework for this film’s point of view. We can never know what it feels like to be someone else; we even have difficulty reconstructing our own early selves. Biopics like this one help us, and when a nuanced script, a uniformly high level of action, and a carefully paced narrative rhythm come together as they do in this movie, we only be grateful. It’s worth seeing, both as a great movie and as a credible and moving interpretation of a troubled man’s life. ****

Morley Callaghan. No Man’s Meat (1931)

     Morley Callaghan. No Man’s Meat (1931) Soft-porn novella originally published in 1931 in Paris in an edition of 525 copies, all signed by Callaghan. Reissued by Stoddart in 1990. A divorced woman visits her friends at their cottage in Muskoka. She plays poker with the husband, loses every hand, and finally bets her virtue. The wife insists that the husband collect the bet, which the friend feels is a matter of honour. It’s not a good experience for either of them. The wife comforts the friend. Next morning, she tells her husband that the friend left her marriage because she cannot stand the touch of a man. Next morning, she drives the friend to the station, and leaves with her. The husband is left alone to ponder the note in which the wife confesses that she loves the friend, and that she will not return.
     Like all of Callaghan’s stories, it’s told in a plain style that distances us from the action while at the same time engaging our imaginations and so our feelings. But it’s not among Callaghan’s best stories, and would not have been reprinted if it had been by another hand. **

Mr Harper's War on Science

Since taking power in 2006, the Harper government has systematically reduced funding for anything that directly or indirectly opposes their ideology. John Dupuis has compiled a chronology  on Science Blogs. Read it and weep.

Human Cantilever Bridge

 

Boing-Boing republished the above old photo, which I first saw in a Wonder Book, a series of compendiums first published in England sometime in the 1920s, and continued into the 1950s: Human cantilever bridge

George Gently & Miss Fisher: two TV series episodes

     Gently: The Lost Child (2012) Episode 3 of the 2012 season. [D:Nicholas Benton. Martin Shaw, Lee Ingleby] An adopted child is kidnapped, but the reasons aren’t money. The kidnapper was himself an adopted child. The adoption agency is run by a woman with well-meaning but mistaken motives. Gently and Bacchus must navigate an emotionally intense tangle of past history, motives, secrets, and events. People are unable or unwilling to reveal essential knowledge because they are afraid of their own vulnerability, and because they want to do what’s best for their partner. Well meaning motives cause trouble. Gently and Bacchus’s own lives mirror some of the relationships they must investigate.
     Like the other Gently episode we’ve seen, this one’s moody, sad, psychologically complex. Hunter (the author of the books) clearly is more interested in how the random collisions of private and public knowledge and motives lead to catastrophe. ***

     Miss Fisher: Raisins & Almonds (2012) [D: David Caesar. Essie Davis, Nathan Page.  Based on the books by Kerry Greenwood.]
     It’s the 1920s. The Hon. Phryne Fisher is for some reason displaced to Melbourne. There she lives in a fine house with a full staff and several hangers-on that assist her in her investigations. Just how she has created a PI career for herself is unclear, since this is the 5th episode. The series is now in its third season, we will watch it when we can.
     The series is agreeable fluff, lovely clothes and cars, stereotypes galore (Australia at the time was still very much a colony), many different accents, and light-weight historical references, which in this episode form a large part of the plot and puzzle. The McGuffin is a formula for synthetic rubber, created by the murder victim, who has Zionist connections. Family rivalries motivate the murder. There’s some kind of romance developing between Miss Fisher and Inspector Jack Robinson. Miss Fisher has a gun and a dagger, both of which she uses when she needs to. In short, an adventure romance of the kind that is rarely written these days, which may explain why these books are quite often translated into video.
     The scripting, acting, photography add up to competent story-telling. A well-crafted entertainment. Worth watching if you like this genre. Wikipedia has entries on both Kerry Greenwood and the TV series.**½

Fundmentalism and art

     A news item today (27 February 2015) reports on ISIS attacking Assyrian Christians, and destroying ancient artworks. Al Qaeda destroyed ancient art in Afghanistan. The Puritans defaced and destroyed religious art during the English Civil War. In Europe, Protestants defaced Catholic churches during the Counterreformation. The Nazis attacked what they called Degenerate Art. Maoists and Stalinists imprisoned artists who produced unofficial art. All kinds of fundamentalists have attacked literature and poetry and drama that they didn't like, often murdering the authors.
     And so on.
     Why do fundamentalists, secular and religious, destroy and deface artworks? Why are they so enraged by literature? One could write a lot of analysis about each case, pointing to doctrines, beliefs, attitudes and values. But it boils down to a very simple fact: Art records and expresses how someone knows the world.
     We understand an artwork to the extent that we are able to imagine being someone else. More than that, the artwork makes it possible to do that. Through art we can imagine different values, attitudes, feelings.
     And that's why fundamentalists hate art. Art is proof that it's not only possible to be different from you, but that it's inevitable.
     Fundamentalism is the inability to tolerate the diversity of humankind.

Codebreaker (2011)

     Codebreaker (2011) [D: Clare Beavan and Nic Stacey. Ed Stoppard, Henry Goodman, and contemporaries and family of Turing] Short documentary about Alan Turing, about his work as code breaker at Bletchley Park, his seminal papers on computing, and his conviction for gross indecency and his eventual suicide. He was sentenced to receive stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen, which among other things messes up the brain. The title is ambiguous: Turing broke two codes.
     Alternating between voice-over narration of Turing’s life and dramatised sessions with Franz Grünbaum, the psychiatrist who treated Turing (and who became his friend), the film is an effective indictment of the attitudes that destroyed one of the most brilliant minds we’ve been privileged to know. We are somewhat less benighted now, but there are discouraging signs of increasing acceptance of hostility towards those who depart too far from current norms. It’s depressing to watch a story about the destruction of human being.
     The movie reminded me of how the Turing Test has evolved over time. For a while, I participated in a newsgroup about artificial intelligence. We ascribe awareness, self-awareness, personality, etc, because of the  behaviours of our fellow creatures. Sometimes, we go too far: I don’t think a snail is aware of pain, even though it recoils from flame. But it is certainly capable of learning, if by that we mean changes in behaviour that depend on the history of the individual. Since learning is an essential component of intelligence, the snail has some degree of intelligence. And since we see intelligence of varying complexity in many different creatures, it’s no stretch at all to expect that machines will exhibit intelligence. It’s when we conflate intelligence with self-awareness, with consciousness, that we get into trouble. More precisely, “intelligence” as a cognitive trait is far too stretchy a term. For many people, it includes creativity, for example. For many others, it requires not only problem solving, but also awareness that one is solving a problem. And so on.
     Recently, I came across a fact I’d ignored, and a comment that reframes Turing’s Test.
     The fact is that Turing machines are incredibly inefficient compared to brains. We can compute “that’s Uncle Fred, and he’s happy” in a fraction of a second expending a few joules of energy. A machine needs longer and expends many kilojoules of energy to compute that “That’s Uncle Fred”, and it can’t (yet) compute that he’s happy.
     The comment is that the Turing Test is really about humans, not machines. It tests whether the human can be fooled by a machine. And since the program is devised by a human, it really tests whether one human can fool another one. But we already knew that.
     It’s mark of Turing’s gift to us that even as we mourn him, we want to think about the things that mattered to him. ***