Movie review: The Imitation Game

Benedict Cumberbatch is on a roll.  He won an Emmy for his role as Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock; he provided the voice of Smaug in The Hobbit; and now he stars in The Imitation Game, getting serious Oscar buzz for a Best Actor nomination (Gold Derby has him in third place).

In The Imitation Game he plays Alan Turing, the famous British mathematician who was responsible for cracking the German Enigma Code, significantly helping the Allies win World War II.  His name has become attached to the phrase “Turing Test,” referring to the test to determine if a computer can imitate human responses well enough to be mistaken for human.  The role provides Cumberbatch with an opportunity to flip his performance as Sherlock Holmes in a way; Sherlock knows everything and understands everyone, while Turing knows everything and understands absolutely no one.

Turing basically invented the computer in the process of breaking the Enigma Code, but his biggest obstacle wasn't the complexity of the Code but his own personality.  As with so many IT people after him, he had appalling people skills. When one of his colleagues produces an idea that will greatly speed up the computations necessary for cracking Enigma, Turning responds that the idea isn't exactly terrible. “That’s Alan for ‘Thank you,’” explains Jane Clarke (Keira Knightly), the only human smart enough not to annoy Turing to death.

Thank heavens for Knightly’s character.  This film is filled with mid-twentieth century British men with stiff upper lips, all of them as sunny as a London evening in March.  Knightly brings light and energy into every scene she’s in. He character’s rapport with Turing is so palpable that it almost obscures the vital fact that Turing was, in fact, gay at a time when that was illegal in Great Britain.

The film’s structure, which creaks more than a bit, is centered around an investigation of Turing after World War II has ended, which resulted in Turing being prosecuted for what was decorously called Indecent Behaviour.  Flashback then take us back to Turing’s work during the war, while flashbacks-within-flashbacks take us back to Turing’s school days and his first boyhood crush.  The film would have us make some psychological insights into how the latter influenced the former, but frankly I don’t see it.

I've seen enough film biographies to know to take any fact given with a grain of salt.  Who knows how much of the truth (or what is known of the truth) is fitted into the script.  I always err on the side of assuming any resemblance to the truth is mostly coincidental.  But the story of Turing’s race to crack the Enigma Code, and his subsequent realization that the German’s couldn't be tipped off to the fact that the code had been broken, makes an entertaining cinematic tale.

The script is solid, save for one scene towards the end when Turing and Clarke have it out.  It is a testament to Knightly’s acting that her reaction seems false and I place the blame on the words in the script and not her acting.  After being Turing’s sole source of support for many years it isn't credible that she would do a 180 literally in the middle of a conversation.

The film is worth watching for Cumberbatch’s performance, and Knightly’s as well.  If you really want to learn about Alan Turning you probably should find a good book to curl up with.  Or look something up on what the film refers to as a “Turing Machine” better known as a computer.  I hear they are all the rage these days.