The Imitation Game is the Real Thing!

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2015)

Eagerly awaited general release of The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in a superb bit of acting, and was not disappointed. The story, hidden for almost 30 years, is by now familiar—Alan Turing, the brilliant but eccentric Oxford student admitted to Bletchley Park's code-breaking team, figures out how to decrypt messages generated by the Nazis' super-secret Enigma machine, shortening WWII by two years, and, oh, by the way, inventing computers in the process. Last month Andrew Hodges, author of the book the movie's based on, was appeared locally for a talk—a bit dazed about this great success 30 years post-publication—and his insights (summarized at vweisfeld.com/?p=3781) were, frankly, helpful. He powerfully described the homophobia that pervaded the British intelligence services (and society in general) in the 1950's that made Turing a target. Also the greater significance of the apples, alluded to only glancingly in the movie and without context. Turing was fascinated with the Snow White story, and saying more drifts into spoiler territory. I earnestly hope someone said to him what Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) says near the end of this film. Clarke responds to Turing's lifelong struggle with being different from other boys and men, and says how he "saved millions of lives by never fitting in," as Tom Long put it in The Detroit News. Or, "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine," says the movie's tagline. There's a little too much standing in front of the marvelous prop constructed for the movie, which the producer says is like the original Turing machine, just not in a box, so you can see the works. The secondary characters are thinly developed and no doubt worthy of greater interest. However, the scenes of Turing as a young boy (Alex Lawther), trying to come to terms with his differentness, are heartbreaking. I agree with the other reviewers who've commented on the unnecessary departures from real life, but, this is the movies. They cannot help themselves. Add a dubious romance? a phony betrayal? Please, Hollywood, we can do without the clichés.