A Puzzling Love Story

Enigma
Directed by: Michael Apted
Screenplay by: Tom Stoppard
Based on the novel by Robert Harris
Copyright 2001
Released by: Columbia Tri-Star
Cast: Dougray Scott, Kate Winslet, Saffron Burrows, Jeremy Northam
Available in Region 1 DVD at Amazon.com

Historians believe that the Battle of Atlantic was the most underreported battle that took place during World War 2. Primarily because land warfare took the brunt of media coverage due to the increasing number of correspondents sent to the front lines. The war at sea, meanwhile, was left forgotten-only to those who were there to witness the conflict attested that it happened. Reportages were difficult to come by, many reporters preferred dying in Normandy, Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Ardennes rather than disappear in the cold waters of the Atlantic or in the depths of the Pacific. It was fear that purged in the hearts of these men, especially the crews of convoys, the unknowing preys of the German ("Wolf pack") U-boats sent to sink them and deprive Great Britain and the Soviet Union of much needed supplies from the United States. Without air or sea cover, these merchant shipping convoys were merely sitting ducks from the target sights of the German submarine commanders. The only hope that kept these men alive was the effort of the British Intelligence in breaking the German submarine codes which went by the codename: Enigma.

Loosely based from Robert Harris’ novel of the same title, the film is basically…a love story set during the height of the codebreaking operations of the British at Bletchley Park. Tom Stoppard ("Shakespeare in Love") wrote the screenplay and Michael Apted ("Enough") directed the film. Dougray Scott ("MI2") played Thomas Jericho, a brilliant mathematician responsible for deciphering the German U-boat codes that eventually became known as Ultra, and at the same time recovering from a lost love that earned him a return ticket to Cambridge. The urgency of the global condition saw Tom Jericho a redeployment back to Bletchley Park, the center of the codebreaking operations of the war. The mystery of a crytogram stashed beneath a loose floor panel on the cottage of his missing loved one, Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows) added sufficient weight to the basic conflict of the story. Tom, then sought help from Claire’s cottage mate, Hester Wallace played by Titanic star Kate Winslet, who admirably portrayed a nerdy, British country girl employed at Bletchley as an intercept clerk. As tensions grew and the climax slowly developed, we see the montage between the impending assault of German U-boats on a convoy and Hester Wallace’s attempt to decipher the codes found in Claire’s cottage.

Enigma is a comparably different from the Michael Douglas-Melanie Griffith thriller Shining Through, for it blatantly portrayed espionage on a rather, distinctive manner. Most spy films revolted on the clandestine affairs that normally transpire on enemy territory. Enigma represented these covert activities within the confines of Bletchley Park-the `spies’ unknowingly, the men and women working there. Actually, it wasn’t a typical espionage story, not your usual James Bond or MI6 thing, or rehashed from a John Le Carre novel. Tom Jericho is not your run-of-the-mill spy, but rather a man caught between his love for a certain woman and the profound interest being served by his country at war. In circumspection, the film evidently depicted the Battle of Atlantic being fought in subtle clashes; of brains magnified as mechanical beings; of men in pursuit of unbreakable codes, and the exemplary heroism and bravery these civilians endured.

Likewise, Tom Stoppard did a magnificent job of fictionalizing the discovery of the Katyn Forest massacre of Polish officers the Soviets perpetrated during the winter war of 1940. Although the incident was covered up and denied by the Soviets throughout the war to preserve the alliance Stalin pacted with the United States and Great Britain, nevertheless its discovery late in the 1940s somehow nearly severed the ties. Its incorporation in the storyline, however merely complicated the flow of the plot, but it served as the primary conflict aside from the race against time effort of the Bletchley Park crew to crack the new German U-boat codes.

Dougray Scott’s portrayal of Thomas Jericho, is nonetheless, flawed. I was expecting an Alan Turing-esque character (or a cameo, perhaps?), a man of exemplary intelligence who wouldn’t notice the budding romance between him and an intercept clerk. Though Dougray Scott performed perfectly well, his assuming a role of a goody-two-shoes nerdy mathematician somehow pulled him off the bad-guy/villainous image he exuded in John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2. Saffron Burrows as Claire Romilly, played a small part but influenced greatly in the molding of Tom Jericho. I admired Kate Winslet in this film, as Hester Wallace she delivered the part almost impeccably-the country girl dragged by Tom Jericho to solve the mystery of the coded messages they both found on Claire’s floor panels. Jeremy Northham did a remarkable acting as British Intelligence operative Wigram in pursuit of Tom Jericho regarding the disappearance of Claire Romilly and to unmask the existence of a German spy within Bletchley Park.

So many films and books were written regarding the codebreaking operations the British and the Americans undertook during the Second World War-but none of them as poignant and as distinct as Enigma. Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Ed Harris’ Codename: Emerald and perhaps, Shining Through may have been the filmic and literary paradigms that created a major effect on the cinematization of Robert Harris’ novel. However, I haven’t read the book (though I have a copy of his non-fiction book Selling Hitler), but I’ve seen the adaptation of his other work, Fatherland that featured Rutger Hauer. In contrast, Enigma may not have the thrilling climax and the anti-climactic denouement that Fatherland have, but in terms of the dramatic elements (which I think contributed to the development of both the characters and the conflict itself) that Tom Stoppard had included in the screenplay, it overshadowed the harsh realities of global conflict.

Etchie Piñgol
© June 2, 2003
Office of Student Affairs
University of the Philippines Manila