Cumberbatch enthrals as the brilliant, troubled man who shortened the war.

Rating: 8/10 (25 November 2014)

There is a danger that, come February 2015, there may be three British men vying for the Best Actor Oscar. There is plenty of buzz surrounding Timothy Spall's Mr. Turner and Eddie Redmayne's performance in Professor Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything, and keeping them company is the ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, star of The Imitation Game.
With WWII raging and the Germans edging closer to victory, it was one thing seizing an Enigma machine but an entirely more challenging task cracking the code that changed daily. Mathematician, Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) was recruited by the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, Britain's code breaking centre. Heading a select team in Hut 8, while his aggrieved colleagues battled daily to crack each new configuration of the Enigma code, Turing was obsessed with creating Christopher, an innovative machine designed to think faster than even the team of brilliant cryptanalysts aiming to shorten the war.
Based on truth, director Morten Tyldum's (Headhunters) film is incomplete as a biopic but draws the viewer in as a historical thriller where the enemy is time and the most visible battles, both literal and emotional, occur in a small hut with his colleagues and superior, Commander Dennsiton (Charles Dance). Turing's life is précised and the impact of his life's work is only hinted at in the final summary. Turing accelerated the development of computers, he became a figurehead for the campaign for equality and the legalization of homosexuality, was instrumental in the shortening of the war and his reward was persecution, prosecution and a royal pardon almost sixty years after his apparent suicide.
The Imitation Game cannot possibly do justice to his story but what Tyldum does beautifully is give an insight into the man, his daemons and proclivities, and a brief, intense and hugely significant chapter in his short life. The explosions in Turing's war occur in his mind, in his difficulty in relating to his colleagues, not least of all Hugh Alexander (Belle's Mathew Goode), and in the bustling hub of invention and cypher cracking.
Graham Moore's screenplay, based upon Andrew Hodge's book, is a prodigious feature debut, cutting to the core of Turing's tortured mind and his platonic relationship with Joan Clark (Keira Knightly), the closest he is able to come to a friend. It would be easy to overcomplicate The Imitation Game with information and data or slip into a slanted portrayal that inevitably fails to right the wrongs a puritanical society did to Turing. Fortunately, Moore guides us instead through the excitement of the drama and the peripheral relationships that were mere fripperies compared to Turing's focus. We already know the outcome but, like Valkyrie, the conclusion matters less than the journey. It doesn't matter that history tells us the result, we're still gunning for Turing and his team.
Cumberbatch is on superb form, opening the mind and soul to us of a man that many found difficult to like and few ever really understood. He is awkward, obsessed, a prisoner of his own mind and intellect but Cumberbatch still allows us to warm to him, to be excited for him and outraged when stubborn superiors and peers seek to attack and thwart his unorthodox brilliance.
Knightly is something of a yo-yo actress, swinging between intense and enthralling performances (A Dangerous Method) and bland turns in forgettable films (Begin Again), but in The Imitation Game she delivers a fine supporting performance of sensitivity and strength. This is without doubt Cumberbatch's film but solid performances from Knightly, Goode and Dance add depth and variety to an involving story of an enthralling achievement by a remarkable man.
Alan Turing: saviour of millions, creator of the computer, source of Benedict Cumberbatch's first Oscar? Maybe. Subject of a fine film that glimpses through the glass and demands a detailed accompanying documentary? Without doubt.
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