“No one normal could have done that. Do you know, this morning…I was on a train that went through a city that wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for you. I bought a ticket from a man who would likely be dead if it weren’t for you. I read up on my work…a whole field of scientific inquiry that only exists because of you. Now, if you wish you could have been normal…I can promise you I do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t…I think, that sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things no one…can imagine.”
As a person who has spent a large portion of my life feeling like I didn’t fit in with my fellow peers, this statement affected me more than most anything else in The Imitation Game. This was not my first time seeing it, and I remembered the beats of the film quite well, but my emotional state was still caught off guard as Joan Clarke (played expertly by Keira Knightley) lays out one of the major themes of the film in such a way that we forget that she is basically telling us what we already got from the film itself. It’s so well done that we don’t really care it is being spelled out in the final moments of a film about one of the great travesties of recent British history.
The Imitation Game is two stories intertwined, yet they are also the same story. It is the story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a brilliant mathematician from Britain who is recruited by the government to work on a team tasked with decrypting the German cypher machine Enigma so that Great Britain can intercept secret messages and turn the tides of the war. This Enigma machine alters the encryption daily, meaning that any progress made is lost at midnight, and work must begin again from scratch. While other minds have been focusing on breaking the code, Turing believes he can build a machine that can rapidly decrypt the messages. The finances needed, however, are denied him by his supervisors, so he goes over their heads directly to Winston Churchill, who, upon learning of the plan, approves the funding and puts Turing in charge of the whole project. This decision angers some, including Commanding Officer Denniston (Charles Dance), who is looking for any reason to remove Turing from his post.
Turing’s first decision as head of the operation is to fire two of his teammates. This alienates the others who feel they cannot relate to him. But when he hires Joan Clarke, based solely on her mind rather than gender biases, she can relate to him and finds a way to help him relate with his team better, increasing morale and bringing innovative ideas from all of them into the design of the machine. Still, though, the machine isn’t making headway into its sole task, cracking the codes. That is, until inspiration hits and a way to narrow down the focus proves the key to successfully unlocking them. However, despite the success and its undeniable results in the outcome of the war, Turing is hiding a personal secret that those in power will use against him to take him down.
This second story, Turing’s personal secret, is primarily told in flashbacks as a way to explain Turing’s character and his homosexuality. The film doesn’t dwell on these things, but it does make it perfectly clear about midway through that he is gay. This aspect of his life plays into the great injustice that is done to him after the war that led to his alleged suicide. This was greatly downplayed in the film, which became a source of criticism for some who felt it did his story a disservice. Other aspects were also targeted, with one critic claiming that only two things from the film were accurate: there was a World War II, and Turing’s first name was Alan. In the film’s defense, arguments were made that a film is not history and is meant to promote the feeling of the period and events, not be a direct recitation from a history book. Either way, it is best never to go to the movies for a lesson in history. Use the film as a motivation to seek out real history and learn from actual sources the truth behind the movie.
So much focus is placed on the achievements made by Turing and his team that, until we get to the end, we forget that this is about a brilliant mind that was destroyed by social prejudices of the time. We, as humans, have plenty of examples of working against our own best interests because we simply don’t like someone or have a prejudice of some sort against them. Alan Turing was gay. He was also a brilliant mathematician who was an instrumental figure in the early days of computers. He died young in part because he was forcibly subjected to hormonal therapy to avoid a prison sentence for indecency. In more recent years, his criminal record was posthumously cleared by the late Queen Elizabeth II, a gesture meant to expunge a wrong committed by the British government.
Benedict Cumberbatch is an interesting choice to bring to life Alan Turing. He encapsulates the stand-offish Brit who cannot relate to people. We get moments in his childhood to explain some of why he is the way that he is, and as a person who was often at odds with my fellow peers in my youth and now, as an adult, find it hard to relate to others, I fully sympathized with his clumsy efforts to make friends and build a functional team. All of this rang true in a way that those who make friends easily would have trouble comprehending. Benedict has made a career out of playing socially awkward characters (though he has played other types too), with the best known perhaps being his interpretation of Sherlock Holmes.
Though by all accounts stating that it is historically inaccurate, Keira Knightley’s casting as Joan Clarke works in the context of the film. The real Joan was a very different woman, but for the sake of the story, Keira works perfectly fine here. There needed to be a catalyst for pulling the team of cyphers together, and she functions in that capacity. She is also the heart of the team and brings out the humanity in Turing, a feat that would initially seem insurmountable. While Keira’s interpretation of the character isn’t remotely accurate to the true historical figure, it does work for the purposes of the film. This is especially important in a key moment near the end when she confronts the broken man, shaky and struggling from the effects of the hormone therapy. That is where you get the quote that opened this review, and that is where you see the impact she has on this narrative.
This film is a tragedy wrapped up in a story about triumph. Alan Turing made an incalculable difference in the tides of World War II, yet he was treated as a deviant simply because he was attracted to the wrong sex. Had he been born thirty or forty years later, he would have been allowed to live his life, but because 1940s Britain was a less enlightened era in the history of the world, he was arrested and forced to undergo a treatment that ultimately led to his death, whether you believe it was suicide or not. While this film takes numerous liberties with the true story, it gets the feel and the emotions right and it raises just enough curiosity to go seek out the real events and learn about this amazing, yet enigmatic man.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Nora Grossman, Ido Ostrowsky, and Teddy Schwartzman
Best Director: Morten Tyldum
Best Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch
Best Supporting Actress: Keira Knightley
Best Adapted Screenplay: Graham Moore (won)
Best Film Editing: William Goldenberg
Best Original Score: Alexandre Desplat
Best Production Design: Maria Djurkovic and Tatiana Macdonald
____________________________________________________
Release Date: November 14, 2014
Running Time: 115 minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Comments
Post a Comment