The Imitation Game: A war story for the 21st century

Last updated on: December 12, 2014 at 5:51 am by Andrew Collins

The Imitation Game: A war story for the 21st century 2014-12-12T05:51:08-07:00 Andrew Collins

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Review of The Imitation Game, Directed by Morten Tyldum

After the hit BBC TV series Sherlock and last year’s The Fifth Estate, The Imitation Game shows that whenever the silver screen needs a brilliant, troubled, eccentric protagonist, Benedict Cumberbatch will be there to play the part. In this case he portrays Alan Turing, the World War II-era British mathematician tasked with cracking the Nazi Enigma machine. As a professor, Turing evaluates his life accomplishments by comparing them to Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton at similar ages, and feels much more at home in a crossword puzzle than the local pub. Cumberbatch’s interpretation of Turing is thus a more human (read: not quite as absurdly brilliant) Sherlock Holmes: unable to navigate everyday social situations and insensitive to those working with him, but valued because he alone has the skill set that can turn the tide of World War II in favor of the Allies.

First off, Turing’s sexuality is bound to drive discussion about the film, because it never could have been told with its full depth and tragedy until just a few years ago. He was a closeted homosexual who some years after the war was charged with public indecency for homosexual acts. This makes The Imitation Game one of the first objectively good stories to hit mass culture that “just so happens” to feature a homosexual protagonist. It differs from avant garde films like Brokeback Mountain and Blue is the Warmest Color, in which the progressive relationship is more of an end in itself. Turing’s story of building the first computer to solve the Nazi Enigma machine is remarkable and fraught with drama in its own right, his sexual orientation notwithstanding.

Even though Turing accomplished one of the great feats of the 20th Century, The Imitation Game at its heart is a tragedy. It reveals his character deliberately by shifting between three pivotal moments at the beginning, middle, and end of his life, making him increasingly sympathetic by exposing layer after layer of loneliness. His life begins with the death of his closest friend, peaks at foiling Nazi Germany, and ends with a body shaking from hormone therapy. Such a shameful end contrasts sharply with the fact that his contribution to the Allied cause of freedom and democracy dwarfed that of almost anyone else. He pioneered one of the most revolutionary technologies in history. His name should be mentioned in the same breath as the likes of General Patton and Bill Gates. Yet his accomplishments came at the cost of his own freedom. At every turn (at least, it appears so in the film) he was misunderstood, despised, and opposed—as strange as it sounds, he is a type of Christ.

The weight of isolation that Turing experienced because of his sexuality adds greater emotional depth to The Imitation Game’s story. But the film often comes dangerously close to sermonizing. Turing’s assistant Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) grapples with working as a woman in elite military and intellectual circles among a society (and family) that has much more domestic expectations for her. Turing himself cares only about her mathematical ingenuity, but he persuades her to work on cracking Enigma by giving onlookers the impression that she’ll be working mostly alongside women. Her experience facing underwhelming gender expectations parallels Turing’s closeted sexuality and draws them together as platonic confidants, and they temporarily overcome it by masquerading as a couple. However, it leaves the film’s remaining characters – and that era of British society in general – looking like simplified chauvinists and homophobes. It makes it tempting to look down on and in many ways condemn “the greatest generation.”

The film’s title refers to a fascinating exercise of Turing’s in which he gives the listener a series of clues from which they must determine whether the subject is a machine or human. Turing plays this game with a detective when taken in for questioning after his arrest for indecency. Confronted with Turing’s true past, along with his dispassionate brilliance even while under arrest, the detective throws up his hands. “I can’t judge you,” he tells Turing, acknowledging his unworthiness before the man who took the first decisive steps toward creating artificial intelligence.

A year later, Turing committed suicide (note that historically, the circumstances of his “suicide” are debatable), alone at home with his computing machine, which he named Christopher. Today we think of artificial intelligence as generally lesser than our own. It lacks autonomy, after all. But Turing’s story reminds us that these “electric brains” have at least one modern virtue – they do not discriminate.

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The stories we tell on the big screen long for and echo the truth

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December 15, 2014 The Imitation Game: Decently likable, terribly trite

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