The String

The original title of the 2009 film, The String, is Le Fil, which actually translates as thread rather than string. These two English words have different connotations and this bears on the film’s leitmotif. Whereas a person can string another person along, a thread has a connotation of linking people emotionally. The thread that ultimately succeeds in the film is that of caring, which is antipodal to hurting, emotionally speaking. In this sense, the film is like The Holiday (2006), another romantic drama in which the good guys (and gals) wind up on top. In terms of the theme of caring and not hurting other people, that The String centers on two gay men who fall in love whereas The Holiday is about two heterosexual couples matters little, though the resistance to homosexuality in The String is an additional hurdle. I contend that like The Holiday, The String can provide audiences with how falling in love can proceed naturally without exploding because one person hurts the other. In other words, the ethical wins out in both films in regard to emotionally intimate romantic relationships, and in this respect the medium of film has value in terms of ethics.

In The String, Malik returns to Tunisia from France to live in his mother’s house because his dad is dying. Malik has been unwilling to tell his mother Sara that he is gay, and she is unaware of his sexual prowess with local guys, including one of his cousins (who gets “turned on” not only having sex with a cousin, but also paying anonymous guys for sex). It is no accident that Malik and his cousin sniff a “substance” as they are kissing in a bathroom, for there is no emotional connection between the two men that would bring the sex to a higher intensity naturally. Meanwhile, Malik is gradually falling for his mother’s houseboy, Bilal, who, crucially, is falling for Malik. “One-sided love” simply does not work; it is too unstable an element not to explode at some point. Once Malik and Bilal mutually realize that they are falling for each other—perhaps the most beautiful thing of which two human beings are capable—and neither is afraid of the emotional intimacy, two things happen.

Explicitly, Sara discovers her son and her servant intertwined on Malik’s bed the next morning while the two are still asleep. It is not as if Malik has drawn an invisible line down the middle of his bed as a way of rudely informing Bilal that bodily touching is off-limits while Malik is asleep. Sara, a Catholic, immediately goes to her cancer-stricken husband Abdelaziz, who is a Muslim, to inform him that their son is gay. Interestingly, he defends his son’s sexuality, pushing back on Sara’s disapproval. This is ironic because Abdelaziz’s family did not approve of Abdelaziz marrying a Catholic woman. Both from that experience and her husband’s opinion on Malik being gay, Sara relents and accepts her son’s homosexuality, and the fact that her son is in love with one of her servants.

The second thing that happens once Malik and Bilal have consummated their deep romantic (not just sexual attraction) affection for each other is very subtle but very, very important. Malik stops “sleeping around.” It is not that Bilal has insisted on monogamy; rather, Malik no longer is motivated to have sex with other men.  I suspect that this is due to the natural willowing of focus that happens when someone falls in love with another person. It could also be that physiological sex alone pales experientially relative to sex with a beloved. There is one scene in which Malik is running his fingers down the backside of Bilal’s naked body in bed. Relative to the intimacy—even love—shown in that scene, anal (or virginal) sex can seem superficial and even contrived. This is not to say that people who fall in love should necessarily be monogamous; rather, the implication is that even an “open” relationship of (a reasonable amount of) separate physical sex with others pales in comparison to the depth of emotional intimacy that can manifest sexually for two people who are in love. It could be that were a sequel to have been made of Malik and Bilal years later, their love would be solid enough even though the sex has become stale that they would be fine with either or both of them having non-emotional, physical sex with others from time to time, assuming that neither would impose this on (or hide this from) the other. Separate sex with romantic connection or feelings for another person is another story, however, and the emotional hurt that either Malik or Bilal would feel is so engrained in (normal) human nature that such an imposition would be unethical, even before marriage.

Malik and Bilal do not marry, as it is presumably illegal in the Muslim country. Because Malik has promised before falling for Bilal to enter into a contractual marriage with his cousin and friend, Syrine, in order that her baby, when born, would legally have a father even though Malik is not the biological father, and her unmarried pregnancy would not be discovered in that conservative society, Malik and Bilal have difficulty deciding whether Malik should follow through with the marriage. Bilal is against it for obvious reasons, but Malik wants to help Syrine. It is not as though Malik would be living with Syrine, so with the help of Sara helping her son and Bilal on this emotionally difficult matter, Bilal agrees and even stands as Malik’s best man. After the civil (i.e., non-religious) wedding ceremony, Sara has Malik, Bilal, Syrine, and her bridesmaid repeat, “The marriage is only for the good of the child.” Everyone is on the same page, and no one his hurt emotionally. Even though the expanded arrangement is unconventional, it is arguably ethical precisely because everyone’s feelings are taken into account. Malik’s benevolence to Syrine (and her baby in standing in as his father) and the love of Malik and Bilal for each other (for they are living together as a couple) are compatible.

In both Augustine and Leibniz, justice is love as universal benevolence. That the benevolence is universal, we are all due benevolence from others, which means that none of us deserve to be hurt emotionally. This is why it is significant, albeit subtle, that Malik puts Bilal first, rather than imposing emotional hurt on Bilal by dismissing his hurt feelings regarding Malik technically marrying Syrine. The marriage goes forward because Bilal’s misgivings have been adequately addressed not only by Malik, but also by Sara, who has essentially adopted Bilal. As she says at one point, he is now a guest, not a servant. This is why I believe it can be concluded that, hypothetically, were Bilal to object to Malik continuing to have anonymous sex after he and Bilal have bonded (which Malik does not do in the film), Malik would stop having sex with others so Bilal would not be hurt emotionally. By implication, were Bilal fine emotionally with Malik having non-emotional, physical sex sometimes with other men, Malik’s doing so would not be unethical or detrimental to his relationship with Bilal.

Hence my conclusion that the ethical, good guys (and gals) come out on top in the film. Caring is the thread that runs throughout the story. Sara has come around on Malik being gay and she even helps her son and Bilal on whether Malik should help Syrine by marrying her and helping her raise her baby, whose father is another man.  Abdelaziz, having overruled his parents’ objections to him marrying Sara, a Christian, pushes back against Sara’s prejudice against gays and even urges Malik to tell him the truth regarding his cancer. Last but not least, Bilal and Malik have such a bond of connection, affection, and even love that neither treats the other’s emotions as an externality that can or should be disregarded or indifferently run over. The film thus presents a moving picture of family and romantic relationships as they should be, ethically speaking, even if they are not conventional.

The Imitation Game

Films in which philosophy of mind is salient may, like films in which metaphysics is reconfigured, run the risk of not being understood. The Matrix (1999), however, depicts solipsism (or, “mind in a vat”) in a way that viewers could grasp the philosophy without much difficulty. Dialogue, image, and narrative all contribute to give audiences a coherent sense with which they can go on to look at their daily lives as if they were illusory rather than real. Sixteen years later, The Imitation Game (2015) brought to audiences a salient question that would become more pressing during the AI revolution: How does the human brain’s thinking differ from a computer’s thinking?

In the film, whose story takes place during World War II in Britain, Alan Turing dismisses the suggestion that the brain is a machine, and yet more often than not, he behaves like an emotionless machine in his relations with other people. In repressing emotion so much, it may be that the actual man was autistic. In such a case of utter indifference to the feelings of others and pushing down on one’s own feelings, it may be more difficult to distinguish human from machine thinking, if indeed computers (which compute) can be said to think at all. I once met a person best described as relating to me as if I were a remote acquaintance. Her utter refusal to feel and cold indifference to my feelings reminds me of Turing in the film. Humans may be able to resemble thinking machines too closely for comfort. In such cases, using what is known as the imitation game to assess whether the entity supplying answers to questions is human or a machine may be more difficult. Fortunately, Turing is not a completely emotionless thinking-machine in the film (and presumably in real life too), so regarding the inventor of the computer, it cannot be said that it takes one to invent one.

The film is centered on Alan Turing’s invention of a computer to decode the Nazi coding-machine known as enigma, and he cleverly resists the temptation once his computer breaks the code to prevent every Nazi attack because that would tip the Germans off that their enigma was no longer an enigma to the enemy. Letting 80% of the secret German attacks go through while preempting the remaining 20% strategically enabled the de-coding to remain a secret for the remaining two years of the war. In short, Alan Turing is accurately depicted in the film as an excellent thinker who invents the first computer, which in turn presumably can think.

Can it be said, however, that Turing’s computer thinks? AI, which may complicate the answer, is not relevant in the historically-based film. Does computing 1’s and 0’s constitute thinking? If so, because computing is mathematical-logical in nature, computer “thinking” would be a subset of thinking in general. Spinoza’s thinking substance has an infinite intellect that contains an infinity of ideas, some of which that God thinks into being in the world. Spinoza’s pantheistic “God” generates the world by thinking. This notion of thinking is similar to the role of Logos, God’s rational principle, or Word, in the biblical Book of Genesis. Does such thinking bear any resemblance to the that of a human brain or a machine whose “thinking” is not subject to the warping effects of subjectivity? If so, then God’s wholly-other quality would be diminished in the anthropomorphic projection of the human attribute.

Can it be that machine “thinking” differs from human thinking because only the latter is affected by subjectivity and emotions? Nietzsche claims that the content of an idea in the human mind is an instinctual urge; thoughts are simply one form in which passions can manifest—only the most powerful urges among others being able to break through into consciousness. In The Imitation Game, Turing’s desire to solve enigma so the Allies could defeat the Axis powers fuel his tireless work in inventing a machine that, like Einstein’s theories of relativity, is totally new rather than merely a modification of an existing machine. This sets up the dramatic tension of the film.

As can be expected from reading Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, such a leap as Turing makes triggers resistance. The idiocy of the knee-jerk efforts to thwart Turing in his work is only outdone by that of the official resistance to him personally. Moreover, the pathetic quality of the resistances is so far removed from the brilliance of Turing’s mind that the sheer complexity of and the resulting variability in the human brain are hard to grasp even from having seen the film. This is no fault of the medium of film, or the screenwriter and director of this film, for it is astounding that the man whose brain invents the computer is given the choice of two years in prison or hormone treatment because he has been found guilty of violating the law against indecency because he is a homosexual. Put another way, a man with a brain capable of inventing a computing machine that could outdo human thinking in breaking the very difficult enigma code of the Nazis in months rather than millions of years has to be subject to a judge and even presumably men of medical “science” who are so mistaken even on what constitutes a disease (or illness) and is appropriate medical treatment. The sheer distance between these poles of this dichotomy is mind-blowing, and yet both genius and prejudiced idiocy are housed in the human brain.

Now, taking a step even further, the question of how human thinking differs from machine thinking begs the wider question that is not explicitly asked in the film: how are is human nature different from a machine? Turing calls his computer Christopher. Turing himself is so arrogant and demeaning to the other members of his code-breaking group and even to Commander Denniston that it is surprising that none of them chide Turing for sticking with Christopher throughout the film rather than turn to the more informal Chris among friends. To be sure, my youngest brother’s middle name is Christopher, and it fits in his complete name much better than Chris would.  But I digress. What I am getting at is this: Is Turing more like Christopher than he (or we) would like to admit?

His fiancée, Joan Clarke, is wrong, however, in calling Turing a monster because he is being so heartless in breaking up with her; in breaking off their engagement, he lies that he has been using her for the project all along. He cares for her too much emotionally to use her as his wife as a cover for his illegal homosexuality while she goes without sex in a marital relationship. His apparent coldness is a manifestation of immense care for her, which he masks.

During a flashback in the film to a scene in which the headmaster of his boyhood school informs the sensitive lad that the boy whom he loves has just died of Tuberculosis, Alan stuffs his emotion as he denies having been at all close to his friend. It is ironic that this very sensitivity that would otherwise give him such deep emotional intimacy with another man is why he represses emotion because it had never worked out well for him. The tragedy in the film is precisely that in being so sensitive, Turing is made for emotional intimacy (unlike a machine!), and yet he bars intimacy by walling off his emotions so nobody, not even Joan, is privy to them.

In contrast, Christopher is a computing machine that is utterly incapable of emotion because a machine cannot feel. A machine may think, and even learn, as in AI, but even were a machine to represent itself as if it had emotions, it could not feel them and thus really have them. Christopher is capable of being a monster because a computer is indifferent emotionally to whether people are harmed as a result of an algorithm. In the film, Ex Machina (2014), made just a year before The Imitation Game, two androids without any emotion whatsoever stick a knife into Nathan in spite of the fact that he is their “creator”; he is an obstacle to Ava, the android whose goal it is to leave the building. Christopher is capable of being a monster precisely because, unlike Turing, it cannot feel and act on the basis of human emotions. So too, however, a human being who represses even the emotion of caring (or conscience) can be a monster.

Whether pertaining to a computer (especially with AI) or a person who blocks internal emotion, thinking itself is no panacea. Recall Descartes’ cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. What about: I feel, therefore I am? Do people such as young Turing who repress emotions even well into adulthood because they have never really worked out well exist as fully as a person in love who is saturated with feeling? To be sure, being open to such feeling is risky, and can result in excruciating pain, especially if the beloved is like Turing. But his no to Joan is not because he is repressing (and thus afraid of) emotion. Joan is willing to sacrifice a marriage of sex and children because she loves Alan, and he will not let her do that because he loves her.

Even though Turing tells Detective Robert Nock, whose questioning leads to Turing being convicted of indecency and thus to being ordered by a judge to take incapacitating hormones to cure homosexuality, that machines think differently than the human mind, the latter is capable of behaving as if it were a computer from the standpoint of being devoid of emotion. The human mind can, unfortunately, resemble a thinking machine. Fortunately for Turing, his caring for his fiancée enables him to pass the imitation game even though he could do with letting other people in, emotionally speaking, including the other code-breakers and even his boss, and especially Joan. The death of his boyhood friend whom he loved is perhaps an emotional hurt that the brilliant inventor never gets past, at least in the film. That his homosexuality is a crime both in the film and in his real life, such that he had to take debilitating hormones, is enough for audiences to come away from the film with the sad conclusion that as significant as Turing’s achievement is, he never realizes what he was made for. It is precisely in the word never that true tragedy hits like a club. I wish all those truly beautiful sensitive souls who suffer as Turing does in the film all the strength to overcome their instinctual fear of being emotionally hurt so as to will to feel with other people intimately rather than relate to them in indifference as though a human being were like a machine.