Cine Me

The Imitation Game

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/

http://theimitationgamemovie.com/

How odd that “The Imitation Game,” one of the more rousingly entertaining crowd-pleasers coming out this year—as endorsed by its People’s Choice Award at the Toronto film festival—also happens to be one of the most devastatingly sad. 

On one hand, this is a tense World War II thriller about a stellar team of Brits who cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code. The movie boasts its own inspirational rallying cry, repeated three times in case you miss it, which would be perfect for embossing on a holly-bedecked greeting card: “Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one imagines.”

On the other hand, it is an examination of the tragic circumstances that befell Alan Turing, the film’s central hero, who brings victory to the Allies by inventing a revolutionary machine that would give birth to the computer age. He would later be publicly vilified and savagely punished for engaging in homosexual activity, which was criminalized in England at the time, before committing suicide in 1954.

Instead of being festooned with a chest full of medals, the closeted genius who saved countless lives by significantly shortening the war was cruelly subjected to chemically-induced castration in lieu of jail time. And, because much of the details were kept classified for 50 years, few knew of the extent of his wartime feats, even though he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services in 1945. He was officially pardoned of his offenses by Queen Elizabeth in 2013—a case of too little too late.

This atypical biopic about the brilliant, impossibly arrogant and socially awkward mathematician (played by Benedict Cumberbatch, impeccably perfect in every way) is a somewhat hard read at first. Most likely, it was the intent of screenwriter Graham Moore to make a puzzle out a film about puzzle solving. That is not necessarily a bad thing, however, once the pieces fall into in place. The fractured narrative starts off as a mystery in 1951 with a detective investigating a burglary at Turing’s home where, strangely, nothing was stolen. Eventually, the plot flashes back to 1928 and shifts into a heart-breaking love story as a teen Turing, a brutally bullied school-boy prodigy, chastely falls for a fellow classmate named Christopher.

But “The Imitation Game” is most on its game when it primarily sticks to being a John le Carre-lite espionage version of “Revenge of the Nerds,” beginning in 1939 as it introduces a battleground of the mind that relies on superior intellect rather than bombs to beat the enemy. Norwegian director Morten Tyldum in his English-language debut provides just enough science to explain what is at stake while escalating the beat-the-clock tension involved in the mission conducted by Turing and a handful of other high-IQ cohorts. Alexandre Desplat’s hauntingly propulsive score further enhances the suspense while capturing the gravity of the situation.

Matters turn slightly hokey as the final solution to Enigma code relies on several “By Jove, I’ve got it” revelations. But, by then, you will likely be fully invested in the outcome, no matter how out of left field it might seem. Some of Cumberbatch’s most affecting work is when the older and close-to-defeated Turing is at the end of his rope, unable to even focus on a crossword puzzle because of the drugs he has been given. But as I sit here typing away, I realize I have Turing to thank for being able to access a wealth of information with just a few key strokes and a click of a mouse.

Not only did Turing help save the world, he continues to influence it every day.

For decades, the name of Turing was familiar only to mathematicians and historians of computing, while that of Bletchley was overgrown; the brambles of official secrecy thrive especially well in Britain. Now we know almost too much. Bletchley, where the Allies deciphered enemy communications, has become a museum; you can tour the hut, recently restored, in which Turing and his colleagues toiled. His life has been probed onstage—Derek Jacobi played him in “Breaking the Code” (1986), in London and on Broadway—and subjected to the rummaging of biographers. When Barack Obama addressed Parliament, in 2011, the three British scientists he lauded were Newton, Darwin, and Turing, and the centenary of Turing’s birth, in 2012, ignited a year of celebrations. His head was on a stamp.  

“The Imitation Game” is directed by Morten Tyldum and adapted by Graham Moore from “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” Andrew Hodges’s detailed study from 1983. Hodges was neither the first nor the last to leap with glee upon that final word. Enigma was the name of the German cipher machine, which encoded messages dispatched to the armed forces. The breaking of those codes, widely considered impossible, was achieved in part—or, if you believe this movie, pretty much solely—by Turing, who designed his own machine, a thing of great beauty and ingenuity known as a Bombe, to quicken his task. Turing was also gay, at a time when homosexual acts were a criminal offense. After the war, in 1952, he was arrested for indecency, convicted, and offered “chemical castration” instead of prison. He took the former.

You could argue, rightly, that movies aren’t made for wonks. Still, it’s hard to justify the blank space where Turing’s end should be. He died of cyanide poisoning; a half-eaten apple was found beside his bed; and he had long been fascinated by “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” How could a movie director, of all people, not make something of that? Tyldum builds up to it, with scenes of Turing messing about with cyanide and handing out apples at work, but the payoff is missing. Here, in short, is a film about a highly intelligent homosexual mathematician that shows no homosexual behavior, almost no math, and a faltering faith in the intelligence of its viewers. So, what is there to tempt us?

What's with the fascination in 2014 about World War II? This is the best of three very good films and looks at the invention of the computer by an unusual cast of characters. 

Cumberbatch's performance is riveting, but Knightley deserves credit for doing it backwards and in heels, so to speak. In fact, Clarke probably deserves her own biopic as one of the few female practitioners of the code-breaking art.