If you have not watched the 2014 film ‘The Imitation Game’, go to Netflix and get it off your check list.
Why the hell did I take so long to watch this film? Don’t Ask. Anyway…
Benedict Cumberbatch plays the protagonist, the brilliant British Mathematician Alan Turing, the man behind cracking the ‘Enigma’, a Nazi coding machine. His performance is powerfully cathartic. There are no residual traces of ‘Sherlock’ or ‘Doctor Strange’, he is simply Alan Turing in this film. Something very few actors achieve.
The film flits between the 1940s and early 1950s, like a puzzle that helps solve the enigma Turing himself was – an asocial prodigy who changed the course of one of the bloodiest wars mankind has ever seen.
The plot largely delves into Turing’s groundbreaking work during the war and fleetingly shows us what led to his eventual death. It’s tragic how his efforts were never recognized during his lifetime. Instead he was shamed & punished for being gay in the prudish British society of the 1950s.
I have nothing negative to say about the film, so I will keep it short. It’s perfectly paced, isn’t too sentimental and steers clear from all sorts of frills. Each member of the supporting cast is like an essential cog in the wheel. Kiara Knightley seems a little miscast as a mathematician but manages to pull of the role.
‘The Imitation Game’ was a thoroughly enjoyable fare and allows the viewer to truly appreciate the brief but brilliant life of a man who changed the course of war & possibly prevented millions of deaths. And it sure as hell makes you seethe with anger over the fact that thousands of men and women continue to be the target of in-explainable hate & bigotry due to their sexual preferences.
I liked the movie too, though I felt it didn’t really do justice to Alan Turing’s achievements as the creator of modern computing (of course, the movie was largely focused on decoding Enigma). It was quite sad how he was incarcerated. One can only imagine how much further technologically advanced we would have been, had he been alive longer.
True. And it’s such a shame that people had to drive public campaigns and gain thousands of signatures to get the British Government to issue an apology over what happened & give him the credit he deserved.