During the most desperate days of WWII, the British scrambled to find a solution to the seemingly unbreakable code Enigma in which the Germans transmitted their troop movements. They gathered the countries best linguists and cryptologists together in a race against the clock. ‘The Imitation Game’ is the story of Alan Turing whose efforts to develop a machine to crack the code eventually laid the foundations for the modern day computer. Undoubtedly a genius, but also eccentric, and probably burdened with undiagnosed autism and OCD, Alan Turning was both reviled, yet relied upon to solve this supposed insurmountable mystery.
I have many issues with biopics, not the least of which there is usually an agenda from the director and/or screenwriter. We are given history through the prism of the person choosing ot tell the tale. There is a desire to portray people as good or bad, victim or aggressor, where people rarely fall into such black and white categories. The purveyor places too much spot light on some virtues while glossing over other uncomfortable facts or vice versa. As far as a Hollywood biopic film goes, I feel the ‘Imitation Game’ did it’s best to show a balanced portrayal, but lacked any in-depth exploration of characters and their motivations.
This film falls squarely on the shoulders of another magnificent performance by Benedict Cumberbatch. Very few people can make odd eccentricity appear as appealing as Cumberbatch. He effortlessly captures the oddness of the character without making him overly sympathetic. Of course every story seems to require a love interest and Keira Knightley gives a perfunctory performance as his lab assistant/fiancee Joan. The character is rather two dimensional and other than impressing Turing during a mathematics test and acting as a beard to cover his homosexuality, I do not know what dimension she really brought to the story. For a woman of that time period to be accepted to a Top Secret intelligence organization, I have to believe there is a more robust character that could have been explored other than accepting companion.
Artistically, I admired the film’s non-linear storyline that jumped between before, during, and after the war. The transitions flowed smoothly and only enhanced the understanding of the overall narrative. The theme that ‘Things we never imagine come from people we never imagine anything from’ resonates throughout the film, however there is little redemption for Allan’s in his oddities. His life is one of exile, loneliness, and persecution. His great achievement and the countless lives he probably saved did nothing to protect him from a society that deemed him deviant.
I found his perceived deviance and persecution in a conservative post-war British society to be almost as interesting, if not more interesting, than the story of his cracking the Enigma code. Genius comes in many forms and not always in the manner we wish it would. The same oddness that obsessed him to the point of mania to crack the code are the same attributes which caused society to shun him. We try to label people so that we may comfortably place them into good and bad categories, but people don’t fit easily into prescribed categories. Celebrity and historical figures that we canonize often fall from the publics esteem due to scandal and human weakness, while people we consider monsters are also capable of acts of human kindness and compassion that don’t fit the image we have of them. People are multidimensional and ‘The Imitation Game’ does an effective job at showing the price of non-conformity.
I’ll confess that I know very little of Allan Turing outside this film. The movie accomplishes it’s goal of wanting me to learn more. It’s an impressive film, but not one that I feel would have achieved Oscar level prominence had it not been for the power of Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s a rising star that already shines more brightly than most of the established talent out there. He’s already been nabbed for Marvel’s upcoming Dr Strange role, so we know he’s set for life, but I don’t think we have begun to see the great things that will be coming from him in the future.
If you want to see a masterful performance in a pretty good film, then I recommend ‘The Imitation Game’
I give this film *** stars out of four
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