Checked out the movie The Imitation Game – the new (mostly) true story about Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his team that broke the Nazi enigma code during World War II. I say mostly true because of some things I read in advance and a feeling while watching that some of the more dramatic moments were made up for the sake of a Hollywood pic. Because I guess the thinking is it’s not all that exciting watching a machine turn wheels for two hours.
But if you can forgive some unfair dramatization, I’d say this is a pretty good film about a heroic – but odd – character who (with his team) helped win WW2. It intercuts between Turing as a boy in a stuffy British boarding school, as an adult working with his team on enigma in the 1940s, and then as a convicted criminal in the 1950s.
Criminal, you say? Yes, this is a movie that’s equally about the breaking of the code and about Turing’s conviction of the crime of being a homosexual in a time in England where that was against the law. It’s not a heavy-handed message movie – but it is a movie that reminds us that people are people, no matter if they are don’t strictly conform to societal “standards”. I give the audience I was in with a lot of credit – there was a lot of unhappy murmuring and some tears over the nature of his conviction for his “crime” (it’s in the history books but if you don’t know, watch the movie).
But, yeah, I don’t want to suggest that this end sequence was a Great Big Message… this is a good movie even if they had cut out the criminal way the man was treated later in his short life. The breaking of the code and, more importantly, how the code break was used during the war is fascinating even if it is “just” a bunch of smart guys (and a gal – Keira Knightly) in a room talking about codes and ciphers.
I just wish that certain dramatic lies weren’t told to make the story more film-like. It’s unfair to the real-life people who weren’t Alan Turing himself. Did the navy admiralty try to shut things down? Was Turing really disliked that much among his team? I’ve heard suggestions this is all untrue but were added for the drama. Not fair to the team or the brass.
Still, a good movie that tells a story that was top secret for 50 long years after the war.
Score: 86