Enigma

As a longtime fan of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which begins with British code breakers during World War II, I’m a sucker for the romantic and paranoid atmosphere of this thriller on the same subject, adapted by Tom Stoppard from the novel by Robert Harris. Production designer John Beard has a field day, his period re-creations so rich you can taste them, and the fine cast includes Dougray Scott (who suggests a young James Mason), Kate Winslet, Jeremy Northam, and Saffron Burrows (though she’s chiefly used as a glamorous icon). The film has other old-fashioned virtues as well: director Michael Apted’s intelligent and creative use of Hitchcock (the romantic obsession of Vertigo, some of the mechanics of the early English thrillers) is in a different class from Brian De Palma’s literal applications. The two main producers make an interesting team—Lorne Michaels and Mick Jagger, who also turns up as an extra in one of the flashbacks. In ‘Scope; 117 min.

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