A remarkable take on Alan Turing's life

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2015)

In different ways whether we are aware of it, computers have influenced a lot on the way how we live in this world. As a person who have been at some point interested with computers, I have come across a person named "Turing" alongside with "von Neumann", "Pascal", etc. He's one of the brilliant minds in the history of computers. Mix this person with the themes of war such as cryptography, the Nazis, and "top-secret" operations, will lead to an interesting topic to talk about; topic that is usually made into "B" movies. You can have it at the "Imitation Game", but then in one of the unusual cases, we encounter here a film that is more than a thrilling "B" movie with similar theme.
We get to know "Enigma", a machine built by Germans to encrypt and decrypt secret codes. The codes when decrypted by the Allied forces will greatly increase their chance to win the war against the Nazis, who dominated Europe during the second World War. If you are thinking that war between humans and machines is something futuristic, this film shows us that it has already happened in the middle of the 20th century. It happened, as the way how the film put it, between the brilliant minds of Britain and a German machine; and this led to a question: how can humans beat a powerful machine? Turing's answer was simple: build another machine. Of course, realizing this adversary machine to beat Enigma is such a risky endeavor that will require a lot of brain resources. This is the struggle that the film tackled at its core together with the different dimensions that come alongside it.
We might expect some mathematics, but then the treatment is almost the same as that of "A Beautiful Mind". However, this film has a more sophisticated and realistic take on telling the story of an unusual person. What is even more compelling is that it is a well-crafted mix of victory and tragedy. We get to see the impact of the war and the personal struggles of those who were tasked to solve the "puzzle" at Bletchley Park. Among those struggles, we get to realize that Alan Turing's life was far from the story of a victorious war hero. We get to see how harsh the society can be to those who are considered different and how somebody can lose his purpose despite the gift and achievements. We see all of this accompanied by the remarkable performances of Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley and the above average technical achievements. What can be easily recognized to be topnotch are the film's cinematography and music.
It's not wholly entertaining though because it can be a bit slow at times and uninteresting. If you are looking for some engaging academic discourse about computers and war strategies, you might not get your fix because it tends to tackle the social dimension more and it can be inaccurate at times in historical details. And in the last part, it felt like there is some imbalance though since earlier we get to see its matter-of-fact and neutral treatment on the more sensitive matters.
At the bottom-line, I think the film succeeds in its in-depth take on a person whose purpose in life was not fully realized amidst his/her gifts. Overall, it is a memorable film.