The Enigmatic Man

Rating: 9/10 (1 April 2015)

The British Official Secrets act prevented me as a kid growing up about Alan Turing. I would certainly have liked to know about him in my formative years on many levels. Over a 100 years after his birth he's a role model for gay geeks everywhere, but in his lifetime he would not have been known beyond his field of Mathematics.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the enigmatic man Alan Turing who many consider the founder of computer science. He was also a tortured gay man in those days when sodomy laws were strictly enforced. A respected professor of Mathematics he volunteers for the war effort. Not satisfied with how codebreaking efforts were going he goes right to the top and the sheer brass and effrontery persuade Winston Churchill to put this man in charge.
I doubt Winston Churchill knew much more about what Alan Turing was talking about than I would now. But sometimes genius will out in just the way it's presented. I only wish we had gotten to see Churchill's reaction to Turing's now famous letter.
As we well know now with what has been declassified how Turing and his picked crew broke the Nazi code and with some well used and specific intelligence at propitious moments we were able to win the war in Europe. Part of that crew is Keira Knightley who wins a battle for feminism to be accepted in this all male bastion.
Keira and Ben's scenes have some real emotion to them. He confesses he's gay and she would still like to marry him as fascinated as she is by his sheer intellect. Cumberbatch made the right decision as so many gay men today still make the wrong one. He decides that marriage will just spread the heartache he has in not being able to live openly and proudly with whom he loves. For her role Keira Knightley got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
When different players play the same individual at different stages of life I've thought that some recognition is due. In flashback scenes to Turing's prep school days we see the understated but beautifully played romantic involvement of Alex Lawther as young Turing and Jack Bannon as Christopher Morcum. Those two juveniles are nothing short of magnificent in what they do with the part. Young Morcum's death while still in prep school was a secret heartache he carried for the rest of his life.
The Imitation Game got several other Oscar nominations including Best Picture and took home one Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The saddest thing about Alan Turing is that he's one of a handful of people who ever existed of whom it could be said he bent the course of history and in his life he could receive no recognition for it. In fact we do see what did happen to him post World War II. Now his nation and the world can appreciate him for what he was and what he did.