Imitation Game
Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch: The Hobbit) is an odd duck. Brilliant at arithmetic but horrible at social interactions, Turing is mercilessly mocked at boarding school. His only friend introduces him to cryptography, where he discovers a world he can understand.
The grown-up Professor Turing would have been another in a long line of oddball academics but for World War II. Instead he joins an elite circle of cryptographers tasked with cracking the German Enigma. A coding machine hitherto impossible to beat, Enigma allows the Axis powers free lines of communication to coordinate attacks that left the Allies reeling.
The British captured one machine, but without the code key, which the Germans change every 24 hours, the machine is useless. While the other cryptographers work 18 hours a day on a Sisyphean task, Turing plans to create a machine that can run codes faster than any human.
Loud, massive and expensive, Turing’s machine seems like the creation of a mad scientist. The socially challenged Turing — whose homosexuality, then illegal, is a complicating factor — must figure out how to convince the establishment that his machine is the only way to win the war.
Most of us now have versions of Turing’s machine in our homes and in our pockets. We call them computers.
Director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) creates a competent portrait of a complex man. But intercutting scenes from Turing’s school days and future downfall into the race to beat Enigma, he struggles to make the whole gel.
Screenwriter Graham Moore (The Waiting Room) also skimps on character development — but not on platitudes. You’ll hear the film’s mantra — “Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine” — many times. Turing is the only character who gets the semblance of a real personality. The people surrounding him fill out stereotypes.
Cumberbatch turns in a stunning performance. Now an old hand at playing geniuses on the Autism spectrum, he makes Turing a frustrating, funny and pitiable man. His Turing is much like the machine he creates, a whirring, seemingly emotionless being capable of amazing feats.
Another actor rising above the writing is Keira Knightley (Laggies), who turns a Girl Friday role into an interesting, nuanced look at a woman who sees more to life than the conventions of her time.
With Cumberbatch and Knightley’s insight into the loneliness of genius, The Imitation Game is a good movie — though one that could have been great.