Enigma Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)October 3rd, 2002
Enigma
Rental
To be honest, I saw this film long ago, and every time I have retroactively gone back to catch up, I skipped this one. This does not bode well for the film. I am sure my readers are weary of this sort of excuse, but honestly, a movie that disappears (despite the admittedly challenging signal-to-noise ratio it must face in being seen by me) so easilyŠit is saved, however, by the unfortunate truths of our present.
Enigma is a film first about intelligence, be that military or interpersonal, and secondly a love story in the face of some danger. Kate Winslet and Dougray Scott are both employees of the same British intelligence agency, yet for them to speak and exchange information, to break the elusive code (this is World War II) would get them into more trouble, it would seem, than to share that information with the enemy. I quote the New York Times, I believe, here, which inadvertently reviews this film far better than I could.
"Why does intelligence fail?" Well before dawn on Dec. 7, 1941, the American military, having intercepted and broken Japan's codes, knew at the highest levels that an attack was coming -- Roberta Wohlstetter wrote in her classic 1962 study of the attack[:] "Never before have we had so complete an intelligence picture of the enemy." The military did not know the precise time and place of the attack. Nor could it imagine Japan's will to take so desperate a gamble. And the broken code was too secret to share with commanders in the field. Above all, rivalries among and within the intelligence services meant that information was divided, hoarded, blocked, scattered. No one controlled the pieces of the puzzle.
So no one saw the big picture. The result was a surprise attack. Intelligence fails because it is human, no stronger than the power of one mind to read another, to divine its intent, to know the enemy. Soldiers and spies - and now civilians - live with the terrible knowledge that while the enemy is out there, we may never see him coming."
In Enigma, our intrepid humans are working against their own system, using suspect methods and certainly unauthorized usage of the Enigma machine, and without their aid, the film suggests, Europe might have a very different face today. As it stands, our heroes' struggles are engaging, frustrating, fascinating, aggravating, and for that I recommend seeing the film. However, the screenwriter assumes a little too much knowledge of the intricacy of the code-breaking process, and alienates us just a stitch.
I appreciate greatly Kate Winslet (a stunning creature) being cast (and believably) as a dowdy, underplayed drudge, and being found alluring for her intelligence, her mind, her awareness and guts, rather than her bosom or porcelain skin.
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These reviews (c) 2002 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but just credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks.
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