The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is the latest biographic movie of the 20^th century British mathematician, Alan Turing, who was of major importance to decode the enigma machine, responsible for the encryption of German communications during World War II.   

Pic 1: Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch)

The movie starts in 1952 in a police interrogation room, where an under investigation (charged for homosexuality) Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), leads the audience through a flashback to the war years. Turing hold nothing from the detectives, and soon we are in the early Second World War, the allies losing badly, the United Kingdom facing a severe supply problem and a total incapability to crack the, otherwise easily intercepted, German radio communications.

Moved by the challenge of a unsolved and apparently, impossible to solve, problem, Turing left his academic life in Cambridge to join the cryptography team under the direction of commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance), in charge of decoding the enemy messages. Soon both the genius and the very particular personality of Turing take over the scene, fuelling a riot between his co-workers.

Pic 2: Turing with his machine

The next couple of years are an interesting mix of sweat, blood and tears, in their desperation to achieve a result that keeps eluding them even after the changes in the team, made by Turing, in which he recruited is wife-to-be Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and the development of Turing machine, a proto-computer that, in Turing’s view, was the only possibility to break enigma coding capabilities.

Drama, tension, treason, tragedy but also joy, friendship, achievement and an almost love story, fill the searching years for a solution that was eventually achieved and which changed the course of the war. During this process we sporadically go even further back in time, to Turing’s childhood, where we are introduced to a badly adapted but brilliant Alan Turing, with a strong but tragic friendship and the building up of Alan’s strong although eccentric personality.

Pic 3: With Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley)

Some took offense in the cinematographic liberties taken by the Norwegian director Morten Tyldum and accused him to distort history, but the majority of the critics were pretty receptive and the movie received high ratings in the speciality sites as IMBd (8.2/10), Rotten Tomatoes (7.7/10) and Metacritic (73/100) among other reviewers both on and offline. The gross income was also impressively high reaching recently the mark of 180 million dollars worldwide (to cover production cost around 14 million dollars) what makes The Imitation Game the most profitable independent movie in 2014. It was also nominated for several prizes including 5 Golden Globe Awards and 9 British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations, including “Best Film” and “Best Director”.

I’ve found it a very interesting movie, both for the veridical (even if adulterated) story of an, at least, unique character and for the entertaining experience of the movie itself. Tyldum and his team were able to make a fluid and entertaining movie, with content and some deepness, with emotion and drama without excessive sadness or melancholy. Probably due to the amazing performance of Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing a, not easy life in a not pretty tale, was able to preserve a colourful and dynamic atmosphere that never brings the movie to a standstill swamp of boredom, keeping the things interesting from beginning to the very end. The movie brings also space for reflection about how society treated and still treats, incomparably bright, although maladapted or different in any way, individuals like Alan Turing.

Rating:

Readers Rating - Entertaining - 


Thank you to all for rating this movie!

Nuno Soares