{ when the ropes were pulling you in. }

[delga]

Thank you to every one who left me happy messages yesterday. Naturally, I'm feeling a little buzzed. It's lovely outside - I want to play Sheryl Crow really loudly and dance about in the sun!

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In the first year, The Flatmate and I watched Enigma. We liked it but due to not paying attention during some crucial points, we didn't completely understand what happened. Recently I realised that two of the pivotal characters were played by Saffron Burrows and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau so last night, The Flatmate and I decided to watch it again. We were both pretty knackered out (we'd spent a few hours getting our brains bleached by the gorgeous sunny weather) and I drank my lambrini pretty quickly, so it's surprising that we understood anything this time around. We remembered a lot of it, but there was one section which neither of us remembered having seen. Naturally we both remembered important parts of the conclusion, but they made much more sense this time around.

The film is a WWII period drama revolving around counter-intelligence and code-breaking. Signals sent by the Nazi U-boats were encoded using an enigma machine and a rotating code. At the start of the film, the Nazis have started using a different coding system so the British Navy can no longer track the subs. This is a problem because there are important convoys out at sea - the method of transporting goods from the USA to Europe during the war. The idea was that a group of merchant ships went out together and were protected by the Navy. Knowing where the enemy subs were was important so that you could avoid them.

Dougray Scott's character is a code-breaker who had a bit of a mental hissy because of a manipulative relationship with Saffron Burrows. When he comes back to the job, she has gone missing. Scott, along with Kate Winslet's character (Burrows' housemate) try to determine where she is and why she's gone missing. Coster-Waldau is another code-breaker. Matthew MacFadyen plays this wonderfully stiff and loyal Naval Officer, whilst Jeremy Northam is with the Secret Service. Northam's character is looking for Burrows, too; she's caught up in a mess over something she's helped to decode - is she a German spy? Is she in trouble?

At the film's climax, the code-breakers figure out a way to break the new Nazi code, but they have to sacrifice the convoy to do it. That's the part I'd forgotten - I thought the ships were saved, but they weren't. Burrows' character is so much of an enigma herself that understanding what happened to her was still confusing. That said, I really enjoyed re-watching the film, and it's a great cast and a great story. Based on Robert Harris' novel of the same title, the film is a bit wishy-washy when it comes to historical basis, but really, I don't think that matters in the least. I really do think that a lot of the flist will like this one.

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I'm going to head to the library to drop off all the books I took out for the dissertation, and then I'm going to do some research for my Traditions in Poetry essay. Busy, busy. Some time today I need to go to Pw. and buy some real food, or at the least some more mango juice.

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So, yeah, Women's Murder Club is just... it brings me a lot of glee. I'm behind on everything else, but I put time aside last week to watch the new episode. I'm glad I did; I don't think anything else could have elicited so much zen from me when I was flipping out.

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Listening to news about Burma is making me sad and angry. Aid should have been allowed in earlier.

Comments

[sepiaxtoned.livejournal.com]

belated congrats on the dissertation! I was only skipping through eljay yesterday!

& lambrini, bad, bad choice. I always feel horrific the next day after even a bit of that stuff

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

Really? Lambrini's one of the few alcohols that I actually properly like, and it never does anything to me!

[sepiaxtoned.livejournal.com]

Gah, it may have been the volumes of the stuff I consumed but I felt like the rough end of a very beaten stick after it. *shudder*

[delgaserasca.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it's my tolerance level - if you've slammed more than your fair share of tequilas in a life time, Lambrini isn't going to touch you. (It's bad because I don't drink so much anymore but I could have finished the bottle last night.)