The Imitation Game (2014)
Certified: 12A
Duration: 114 minutes
Directed by: Morten Tyldum
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, Rory Kinnear
KRS Releasing Ltd
The Imitation Game is a top-notch, classy and picture-perfect film and it’s hard to believe this is Norwegian director Morten Tyldum’s English language debut. This historical thriller and true story is very British in approach and look.
Besides having well-rounded peformances, this picture has a detailed and well set-out structure that is even more compelling in the way it presents its tale. The direction is not overtly fussy but rather very skilled.
The Imitation Game adapts Andrew Hodges’s biography Alan Turing: The Enigma and delivers a figure that is every bit as enigmatic as the code that he had been tasked to break. Yet, at the same time, it’s very easy to read this character: a genius who is light years ahead of those around him and is also a homosexual.
In a society where the Labouchere Amendment − dating back from the Victorian era − was still in place, life for homosexuals was definitely difficult.
The film lays out the story through various recollections and flashbacks. It starts in 1952 when Turing is being interrogated by a policeman about having been caught in what is termed to be ‘an act of gross indecency’.
It’s in this manner that the film takes us back in time to show how important Turing was to the war effort and how he was treated in return.
In 1939, when Turing is still 27 years old, he applies for a position that involves him working on a classified project aiming to decipher the supposedly ‘unbreakable’ Enigma code. This was a cipher machine that encoded all German military transmissions that could range from the mundane to the critical.
He is based at Bletchley Park which was the centre of Britain’s most brilliant academics. Turing has to work with others but his haughty demeanour alienates him from the others and brings him into clashes with the military and top brass.
The film lays out the story through various recollections and flashbacks
He is not happy when he is placed behind Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode), who is the national chess champion. When he complains about this directly to the top, Turing is put in charge.
In an open audition for new members to the group, Clarke (Keira Knightley) is recruited and ends up being better than everyone else, and she is the only woman.
The film revolves around a feeling of urgency and yet a controlled sense of this emotion as these academics race in order to crack a code that is vital to the war happening outside their hallowed halls.
It sets us into the frame of mind of those who are facing this challenge and we get to understand the difficulty as the code machine’s settings run into the millions and the setting changes every day.
For Turing, the solution is to build a machine to counteract the German one.
The film is not just about the breaking of the code. It also administers the fact that the code had been broken and the academics had to make sure to not let the Germans realise that the code had been broken as this would have led to the creation of a new system.
This meant having information that at times was of more use if it was not acted upon, even if people ended up dead.
Cumberbatch plays Turing with the entire aloof and haughty attitude that a genius can show towards his inferiors. Then, after the war, when real life begins again, he is not able to fit in the society he helped so much to save. His gaze is simply haunting and icy, and his eyes transmit many different messages.
Knightley fits in well with the overall cluster of characters that play around Turing. She shows inner strength quite well in a movie that works well both visually and also as an inkling into what made one of modern day’s geniuses tick.