The story of Alan Turing is one that is now rightly
accepted as an injustice and personal tragedy: a mathematics genius who helped
win World War 2 by developing a computer to break the Nazi's 'Enigma Code', in
the post-war years Turing was found guilty of Homosexual acts - illegal at the
time - and ordered to be chemically castrated.
Only a year following this he committed suicide. In recent years his contribution to winning World War Two, and that the other members of
a team of immensely clever people, have
come to light and appreciation of their achievements is widely acknowledged. At the same time, now that we live in a more
tolerant society, Turing's personal tragedy has been acknowledged - in 2013 he
was granted a posthumous pardon. If Turing's
story is one underpinned by injustice and tragedy it seems strange that biopic
'The Imitation Game' doesn't seem to evoke this to a greater extent. It is a solid, if formulaic, film of its
type, with a decent cast of quality British actors, it tells the story of
Turing and the team at Bletchley efficiently enough.
The period detail is what you'd expect, but what
separates this from most WW2-era dramas is the way Bletchley is portrayed as
almost being a world away from it; apart from the presence of armed soldiers
and the uniform of the WRENs working there, Bletchley is almost an idyll
compared to the rest of the country.
There are reminders of the War going on beyond them - shots of burning
and sinking ships, the bombed rubble of London in the blitz - but the film
rightly doesn't dwell on these images.
For Turing and the team working to crack Enigma, their war is against
time - to break the code before it is reset at midnight each day, knowing that
each day that passes means more lives lost.
By using the typical war imagery sparingly the film succeeds in never
letting the audience lose sight of this.
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| Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and the team working at Bletchley to break Enigma - a war against time to break the code before it reset each day... |
For a film about what was ostensibly a maths problem,
there is little dwelling upon the technical minutiae of Turing and his team's
endeavours - probably just as well, as those of us (i.e. me) who aren't
particularly good at maths could have been lost. The emphasis is on personal and relationship
struggles, and in this manner it is pretty much a biopic by numbers: there's a
couple of montages, there's the bit where Turing's superiors don't understand
what he's doing so try to shut his project down, there's the bits where his
team don't like him at first and gradually accept and work with him... Where the film breaks out of this a little is
at the moment where Enigma is finally cracked, and the team realises they can't
let anyone know they have - because if the Nazis realise, they will simply
switch to another code, and the war will carry on as it has been. This creates a moment of moral anguish for the team, leading to further
involvement in the skulduggery of MI6.
The cast do what we expect of them - Matthew Goode is a
handsome, caddish type who is at first at odds with Turing before accepting his
way of working; Keira Knightley is a typical plummy, middle-class,
well-educated young woman; Mark Strong is an MI6 'spook' who casually and
amicably uses lies, half-truths and threats to achieve his ends. These are all the sort of roles we've seen
these actors in before, and whilst they're solid in them, they don't exactly
set the world on fire. But these are
supporting roles, and Benedict Cumberbatch is the headliner as Turing himself. He's been drawing a lot of plaudits for his
performance - it's not the most eye-catching I've seen this year, but it is
effective and has some affecting moments.
If you've seen any of his work on 'Sherlock' you'll have seen that Cumberbatch
can do un-sociable genius who is on the autistic spectrum (most likely) with
ease; as well as that I found some of the nervous ticks and stammers he gives
Turing a little bit forced, they didn't always feel totally natural. Where his performance really takes off is in
his portrayal of Turing during and after being investigated and prosecuted in
the post-war years; he conveys a broken man to quite heart-breaking
effect. It's this point which also
redeems the film's use of flashbacks to Turning's formative years at boarding
school - while these are well handled (mostly in part to a sensitive performance
from Alex Lawther as the young Turing), they don't always mesh with rest of the
narrative - until the end of the film.
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| It's possible to see parallels with his work in 'Sherlock' and this, but it's probably why Cumberbatch was the best choice for this particular portrayal of Alan Turing... |
This film does what it needs to mostly effectively, but
not really anything more. Ultimately it
succeeds in conveying the tragedy of Turing's story through the best points of
Cumberbatch's performance; other than that it doesn't break new ground for the biopic
or drama genre. Yet this is a story
which needed to be told, especially in today's context where, sadly, anti-Gay
stances are gaining increasing support in different parts of the world. It is in no small way ironic that many of the
anti-Gay movement in Russia most likely owe their entire existence to Turing -
if he hadn't have broken the Nazi code, and enabled information to be sent to
our Soviet Allies during the war, then it is entirely probably millions more
Russians would have perished at the Nazi offensive.
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