The Imitation Game is the real thing. Pretty much, though not entirely, so.
The latest blockbuster movie starring arguably the two most bankable male and female leads of the moment hits Australia from New Year’s Day and it’s well worth making a resolution to see it.
In the UK, this behind the lines World War II tale received mixed reviews but won over unanimously packed houses. That’s mainly, I suspect, because Keira Knightley is as enigmatic as the machine whose secret wartime German code she becomes instrumental in breaking and Benedict Cumberbatch is, well, Benedict Cumberbatch. I can’t think of anyone capable of a more realistic portrayal of the complex character of the code-cracker Alan Turing.
The trouble with films that are “based on a true story” is that you’re never quite sure which bits are true and which bits are, often legitimately, grafted on from the world of fiction.
The facts of The Imitation Game are irrefutably matters of history, so no problem there.
Turing was recruited from his Cambridge mathematics professorship to Bletchley Park, he and the machine he built did break the German’s notorious Enigma code and, in so doing, he pretty much invented computers. He was homosexual, convicted of ‘gross indecency’ and opted for chemical castration rather than imprisonment as his punishment. He did commit suicide in 1954.
And as former British Premier Gordon Brown is said to have put it, Turin “deserved so much better” (he was eventually granted a posthumous royal pardon last year).
There are, however, some bits of the film that are less than convincing.
The introduction of a fictional (I assume) brother for a member of Turin’s team at least served the purpose of pointing up the dilemma the authorities faced in having to forgo the temptation to use the intelligence gathered as a result of their code-breaking success to intervene in particular actions. In this case, a U-boat attack on a convoy the brother was serving on.
And call me picky, but among the genuine footage used to remind us of the war going on in the background and, thus, the urgency to break the code, I’m sure I spotted a toy destroyer shot in the bath. In the same context we hardly needed the corny Spielberg-esque close-up of a caterpillar track crushing a Tommy’s discarded helmet as Hitler’s tank corps advanced inexorably across Europe.
It’s daft how such little things can distract from the almost eerily authentic mood otherwise masterfully created by a stellar cast and Norwegian director Morten Tyldum.
Don’t miss it though.
