Lucas
Versantvoort / March 28, 2015
I admit
that when I saw that the Weinsteins were involved with The Imitation Game, I was half expecting this to be this year’s The King’s Speech, tailor-made Oscar
bait. Although this is partly true, the fact is that, despite some flaws, The Imitation Game is compelling cinema
dedicated to one of the founding fathers of what we today call computers. You
know, nothing major…
The film starts with a voice-over of
Cumberbatch as Alan Turing telling someone, and of course symbolically us, to
only judge him once we’ve heard the whole story. The film then proceeds to
cross-cut between three time periods: Turing as a college kid, Turing cracking
Enigma during WWII and several years later as he’s being investigated by the
police for some reason. The film tends to cross-cut between these periods in
meaningful ways, emphasizing for instance how his OCD and autism that troubles
him in daily life are rooted in his childhood. The film is as much about
cracking Enigma as it is about cracking Turing the human being.
In 1939 Turing visits Bletchley Park
and, after an awkward job interview, is brought onto the team tasked with
cracking Enigma, the encryption device used by the Germans. If you can crack
Enigma, you’ll intercept all German communications which would give you a
pretty substantial advantage in the war to say the least. Cracking it, however,
would take roughly twenty million years, but Turing goes ahead and starts
making a machine that should crack Enigma. His relationships with his
colleagues and his superiors are another matter entirely however…
Biopics like this will always be
judged from a historic point of view: how closely does it stick to what really
happened? Judging a historic film on that basis, however, would be a great
mistake. A film doesn’t succeed when it follows history to the letter; I
believe that a biopic succeeds when it makes history come alive. The Imitation Game sits somewhere
between these points of view. On the one hand, the film succeeds in making you
feel for Turing and experience the pressures he was subjected to. On the other
hand, some of the ways in which the film deviates from history seem unnecessary
and for the sake of artificially enhancing the drama. For instance, the
grandchildren of Commander Denniston have stated the film unjustifiably
portrays Denniston as a bad guy, while there are no records stating this to be
have been the case. Conveniently, this provides the film with some added
tension, as Denniston lacks the patience to wait for Turing’s machine to work. There’s
also a subplot involving a Soviet spy that likely didn’t take place either. The
portrayal of Turing’s autism was also probably exaggerated, again obviously for
dramatic reasons (his uncomfortable relationships with his colleagues), the
list goes on.
Despite these unfortunate deviations
from history, the film does succeed in making Turing come alive and conveying
the significance of his contribution to WWII and the development of computers
in general. The casting of Cumberbatch also works, not just because of his
stellar acting, but because his, well, ‘unique’ looks make his social exclusion
more believable. If there’s one other complaint I’d level at the film, it’s
that the scale of the narrative is too big for its own good. The film shows
Turing’s younger years, the WWII years and his arrest around ’51. As if that
isn’t enough, there’s also the subplot involving the spy, his relationship with
Joan Clarke, etc. Trying to cram all this into two hours makes some of it feel
rushed.
All in all though, The Imitation Game is compellingly made.
And though I take issue with some of the deviations from history, that
responsibility also lies with us cinemagoers. After all, only a fool would
watch The Imitation Game and think:
“well, that was surely 100% accurate. I now know everything I need to know
about Turing.”
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