To say this movie plays fast and loose with the facts is an understatement. The Poles were deciphering the code as early as 1933 and taught the Brits not only about Enigma but also about the importance of using mathematicians in code-breaking.
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Some of us can watch this as a movie - not a history lesson.
shareSome of us do not want to watch LIES in cinema.
shareif you want history, go to the museum. If you want fiction, go to the cinema!
shareAren't YOU superior! Do you have a "superior dance" you can do?
"They sucked his brains out!"
If you think this is bad, you should watch Jurassic Park. Yeeeah, because scientists soooo resurrected dinosaur's... I can't believe Spielberg thought we'd buy into that crap.
shareNo film should lie when the dramatic purpose of the lie can be served in a truthful way. Saying "It's only a movie" is just excusing propaganda.
Thankfully, there's a bright line separating entertainment and propaganda. I'll show you what it looks like, then you'll be able to see it on your own.
The key to seeing that line is to ask: Could the film makers have served their purpose while still being truthful?
Now, understand that I don't know a damned thing about the Polish contribution to breaking the Enigma code. But for the sake of argument let's assume there's something to it. Given that, then there are 2 possibilities: 1, the film makers were ignorant of the Polish contribution, or 2, the film makers were aware of the Polish contribution but chose to exclude it.
In case 1, there's no foul and there's nothing further to discuss. They can't be criticized for leaving out something of which they were ignorant (though they can be criticized for being ignorant).
In case 2, one must ask: Did the film makers exclude the Polish contribution because they felt it was less dramatic? or less funny? or less shocking? or less ...of whatever is deemed entertaining?
For example, if the key motivation for people to see the film is drama, then could it have been as dramatic if the protagonist had been Polish? If you say, "Sure", then I say, "Why didn't they make the protagonist Polish?"
Hollywood makes its heroes American, not because non-Americans are less heroic, but because Americans want to see American heroes and will not pay to see heroes who are non-American. Well, that's what movie producers think, and it's movie producers who put up the money, so it's their opinions that matter... nothing else. Right?
Propaganda - chauvinism - propaganda - chauvinism - propaganda - chauvinism (on, and on, and on... feeding and being fed).
But this film isn't American. It's British. It's as British as ...as British as ...as James Bond!!!
Just ask yourself: Don't all people from India laugh and dance around all day?
I just watched this movie last night. I can't dispute your 'anti-Polish' argument without giving away the story but I disagree. And the movie did credit the Poles with starting the whole Enigma code breaking business (the French helped too though they didn't mention them). The fact is though that it was the English who perfected the WW2 code-breaking operation and turned it to major strategic advantage in the war. (It is interesting to note that while the Poles were in fact able to break the German military codes in the 1930's and knew their plans, they were still totally surprised in October 1939.) The movie is ok (seeing the Enigma machines and the Bombs in operation was worth it all by itself), but the book by Robert Harris is better.
No-one denies Poland's role re Enigma in the 1930s but the film is about the codebreakers at Bletchley Park in 1943. Things had moved on a lot by that time.
Having Puck as one of the team at Bletchley was perhaps misleading because there weren't any Polish codebreakers at Bletchley. Mind you, according to the novel his mother was English and he spent the first 10 years of his life in England, so maybe he had joint British-Polish nationality.
There was no anti-Polish in this movie. One bitter bad-apple wanting to get even with Stalin for the story line. Not an historical documentary.....a fictional movie with some historical facts in it. I enjoyed it for both and sorry some people didn't.
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It's a MOVIE, not a documentary. Lighten up, Francis.
"They sucked his brains out!"
But the Brits who made the movie stated explicitly that they made it in response to a fictional Hollywood film that credited the Americans with decoding Enigma. Jagger himself said he was outraged by the American movie playing with the facts. In other words the film was made to set the record straight but ended up being propaganda itself.
shareI wish people would stop looking at nations as joint entities and start looking at nations as a group of individuals that is as disparate as any other group. Puck had a very personal reason to defect to the other side, he couldn't bear being on the side of Stalin whose troops had killed his brother. Of course there may have been Poles who had personal reasons for rooting for the Nazis just as there were Germans that didn't root for Hitler and the Nazi party.
http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=5184666
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U-571 was utterly preposterous, but in fact more entertaining than Enigma. But nice try there, Brits.
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Nobody doubts the Polish code breaking efforts with respect to the Enigma machine even in the pre-war era. Also in the obtaining of early machines. However by 1943 the Enigma had become considerably more sophisticated, in particular the naval version. The teams at Bletchley such as Turing and Tutte (to name just a few) were without doubt with genius (not to mention truly forgotten hero Tommy Flowers who built the first electronic computer in order to attack the Lorenz Code.)
The 'bombes' as shown in the film were built at Bletchley, as was Tommy Flowers' Colossus computer. It is rather unfair to accuse those at Bletchley of stealing other people's ideas, they certainly proceeded on knowledge built by code breakers for many decades, that is how science and technology works, but their ideas stand in their own right.
Fortytwo? FortyTwo? what sort of puerile, pathetic, stupid answer is that? Everyone knows it's 43.
they certainly proceeded on knowledge built by code breakers for many decades, that is how science and technology works, but their ideas stand in their own right.
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It should be made clear to some of those posting here that history is not an actual record of what really happened. History is inevitably somebody's opinion. History is opinion. And it changes accordingly.
Fortytwo? FortyTwo? what sort of puerile, pathetic, stupid answer is that? Everyone knows it's 43.
It should be made clear to some of those posting here that history is not an actual record of what really happened. History is inevitably somebody's opinion. History is opinion. And it changes accordingly.
Mostly rubbish. Americans are successfully re-writing the history of WW2 (they won it single-handedly, apparently), Russians are re-writing the history of Ukraine (they did not invade and annex Crimea, or invade eastern Ukraine), and Jews have not re-written the history of Nazism so much as taken it over for themselves (Nazis were apparently the worse people who ever lived, and perpetrated the worst atrocities ever - on Jews, alone - apparently).
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Bad history is not an issue for me here. The film is based on a fictional story.
Its that man again!!