I rewatched Breaking The Code the other night, the TV adaptation of Hugh Whitemore’s play of the life of Alan Turing, in turn based on Andrew Hodges’ book Alan Turing: the enigma.
It’s a wonderful film, not least for Derek Jacobi’s performance as Turing. I’ve embedded below the scene where he goes to Bletchley Park for the first time, and is interviewed by Dilly Knox (Richard Johnson). I love this speech. When I first saw it, I was struck by the contrast with every other film about maths that I’d seen. It doesn’t lazily misunderstand Turing, so as to portray him as a misunderstood genius, obsessed with the incomprehensible. But it makes a real effort to let him say why he’s so passionate about his research, and explain what it is actually about. For me, it beautifully captures the drama within mathematics itself.
