***
DVD Release
Based on Robert Harris’ novel of
the same name, Enigma follows
troubled code-breaker, Tom Jericho, as he simultaneously tries to decode the
Nazi’s new Enigma Code and track down his missing lover, Claire. As he, and
Claire’s best friend, Hester, delve deeper in Claire’s disappearance, it
becomes apparent that Tom’s work has come into play in his private life…
This film has such an old-fashioned,
Sunday-afternoon feel to it – there are few explosions or violent scenes, instead
endless scenes of the grounds around Bletchley Park and rooms in desperate need
of a spring clean. Dougray Scott is Tom Jericho, the desperately unwell and generally
disliked genius who breaks the Enigma Code every day. Scott looks fittingly
unwell as the deeply depressed genius, Jericho, but his character’s complete
mental break down after Claire’s rejection, who he had only known for one
month, seems somewhat strange. I don’t know if his mental fragility is studied
in more depth in the novel, but scenes of him following Claire around the
countryside, begging her to take him back, are rather uncomfortable. Of course,
we can blame the stress of breaking the Enigma Code for making him so
emotionally unbalanced. Scott is a very engaging lead, and it seems unfortunate
that we don’t see him in a great deal today – he has an expressive face (a
cross between Ben Wishaw and Michael Shannon in my mind), and certainly
encapsulates the physicality of a mentally distressed individual. The film
boasts a cast of recognisable faces, including Jeremy Northam, Tom Hollander
and Matthew Macfadyen, who all, of course, play their parts very well. Northam
is especially slimy as Wigram, a rather sinister figure who lurks around
Bletchley Park and Jericho in a vampiric fashion. Kate Winslet plays Hester,
Claire’s unglamorous best friend, and she is clearly meant to be the ‘every
woman’ figure, but because it’s Kate Winslet, I just couldn’t buy it – I feel
that a more ‘unknown’ actress would have been more fitting for the role, but
she does a decent job and you can’t help but root for her.
The trouble is that, against
Jericho’s character, all the other characters appear rather bland and
underwritten, as though we are meant to focus wholly on him whilst everyone
else merely provides the background noise. Having not read the book, but looked
at it sitting on my shelf for some time, the size of it alone seems to suggest
that writer Tom Stoppard struggled to condense everything into a relatively
short feature. Indeed, for a writer of Tom Stoppard’s prowess, there is really
nothing in the screenplay that makes it appear remotely exceptional: in the
opening few scenes, the character’s address each other by name at the end of
each sentence, which is wholly unnatural and jilting for a viewer. Similarly,
director Michael Apted fails to make the film feel remotely tense, although it
is interesting and I did think about how brilliant you must be to be able to
break code long after the film was over. I also didn’t care much for Claire and
couldn’t really get excited about what had happened to her, whilst characters I
was interested in, such as Macfadyen’s wounded Cave, received very little
screen time.
I wouldn’t say that I was bored
by it, and there were some scenes that I did enjoy, but I felt that I wanted
something more from such an interesting plot.
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