A remarkable movie - but not to be taken as a documentary, nor even as the only way to tell this story

Rating: 10/10 (25 December 2014)

This is one remarkable movie.
Yes, the story of the breaking of the enigma machine codes is a fascinating one, though, as one reviewer points out, this movie really doesn't get into the details of how that was achieved - details that most of us, myself included, could probably not have understood. And the tale of Turing, the man who led the team that cracked Enigma and thereby helped to save millions of lives by bringing WW II to an earlier end but then was persecuted under England's anti-gay laws, is a truly sad one. Again, though, it appears that the movie fabricates some details to make the tale particularly moving. But neither of those two historical events makes this the remarkable movie that it most certainly is.
Rather, it's the same stuff that has made for great movies from the beginning: 1) a brilliant script that never plays down to the audience, but always keeps us interested 2) first-rate directing that knows how to bring such a script to effective life 3) first-rate acting that makes us forget we are watching actors and makes us believe we are watching real people going through real situations.
This movie held my interest from the beginning and never let it go. I feel safe in recommending it to anyone who enjoys a really good movie.
I see that some of the reviews on here talk about the differences between Turing and the breaking of the Enigma codes as presented in this movie and the historical truth. That's interesting, certainly, because this movie very much makes us want to know more about both, but it has nothing to do with the quality of this feature film. If I may make an extreme comparison, the real Medieval prince of Denmark, son of King Hamlet, bore very little resemblance to Shakespeare's masterful creation, yet we don't fault the play *Hamlet* because of that. This movie, like Shakespeare's play, takes aspects of certain historical events and characters and creates a remarkable and deeply moving story from them. It never pretends to be a documentary, and therefore should not be faulted for not being historically accurate.
At the recommendation of one of the other reviewers on here, I have since watched the BBC TV movie *Breaking the Code* (1996) about Turing. Again the script is very good, and the performance by the actor who portrays Turing, Derek Jacobi, first rate. The presentations of Turing are VERY different, however. Jacobi's Turing is far less anti-social, and the BBC movie centers far more on the persecution of Turing for his homosexuality in the 1950s than on the breaking of the codes during the war. The presentation of Turing is far more sympathetic. I confess that I found *The Imitation Game* to be more engaging, however.
Since Milos Forman's *Amadeus* was on TV the other night, I was also reminded of how similar the framing device in *The Imitation Game* is to the one used in that masterpiece. Once again the body of the movie consists of developments of scenes mentioned by the main character to an interrogator (a police man, a confessing priest) through whose reactions to the unfolding story we are given a key as to how to perceive it ourselves. The police interrogator's face, at the end, when he says that he cannot pass judgment on what Turing has told him reminded me of the thoroughly devastated priest who is left speechless after hearing Salieri's presentation of his battle with God.