A Moving But Conventional Biopic

Rating: 8/10 (2 May 2015)

Now that Oscar season is officially over and the antisocial wallflower from the corner of the prom (Birdman) has won Best Picture, it's oddly surprising how straightforward and refreshingly conventional The Imitation Game is compared to its eccentric fellow nominees. It's a sweeping, admirably entertaining biopic that goes hand in hand with films like Atonement, seductive in their shimmer but exasperating in their tragedy. Movies can be trite, eager to make money, and annoyingly fantastical, but films like The Imitation Game prove why movies are such an influential art form to begin with. With enough power and enough spark, they can transcend the mistakes of our past and bring much deserved celebration towards groundbreakers who were misunderstood during their prime.
In this film's case, the misunderstood groundbreaker is Alan Turing, the cryptanalyst who cracked Germany's Enigma cipher during WWII. Portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch with supreme idiosyncrasy, Turing is the kind of genius that, well, all geniuses are: socially awkward, quick-witted, and more willing to finish an experiment than solve a personal conflict. We first meet him in 1952, following a burglary that took place in his home; but instead of arresting the prime suspect, authorities direct their attention towards Turing. The thief, as it turns out, was not at Turing's home just to partake in robbery; he was also there to perform a sexual act on the homosexual war hero.
The Imitation Game then spends the rest of its duration traveling back and forth between three periods in Turing's life: his despair in 1952, his sexual awakening in 1928, and his solving of the Enigma Code during the '40s. Exploring his relationship with a classmate during his teenage years and his unconventional friendship with one of his colleagues, the plucky Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), the film not only brands him as an unlikely hero but also as a man who was never quite understood and had to pay for it. Instead of being glorified for his war efforts, Turing was effectively blacklisted for his homosexuality, eventually committing suicide not long after his prosecution.
The film is largely unadventurous with its cinematic instincts, preferring to use a warm string score to outline its emotions and eye- catching costumes to capture the deceiving comeliness of the time period. But in a film like The Imitation Game, technicalities don't matter; what matters is how it grabs you as a human being. And as a human being, I was moved. Cumberbatch's performance is never less than stellar, and Knightley is, as usual, a lightning strike of unbridled energy. Tyldum's handling of it all is by turns handsome and bleak, never clashing but never overwhelming. There are moments of humor and there are moments of devastating adversity, but yet again, so is life. Turing had a brutally unfair one, and the film doesn't throw rose-colored glasses onto its outlook.
Somehow, The Imitation Game feels too short, but that could only be because Turing's time on Earth was much too brief itself. It's strange how one of the most rousing, dramatic movies of 2014 is simultaneously so somber and maddening. So many of the hardships Turing faced never would have occurred if WWII took place during the 2010s instead of the 1940s; maybe that's why his legacy and the film are so hard to shake off.
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