Breaking Enigma & Social Norms
“Sometimes it's the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” All movies have one quote in them that defines the main character or the theme of the movie. For The Imitation Game, it is this quote, said by school age Alan Turing’s best friend, Christopher. This sentence is a reoccurring theme throughout the film.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays socially awkward, mathematically brilliant Alan Turing in The Imitation Game. This personality is a little out of Benedict’s typical character, who is typically smart-ass, intelligent, and rude (Sherlock, Doctor Strange) or a voice actor such as in The Penguins of Madagascar or The Hobbit. Instead, Benedict dips into his dramatic side to play this role and the execution is flawless. Kiera Knightly is beautiful, charming, and independent as Alan’s confidant and partner Joan Clarke, a part that fits her own personality like a glove.
The film is based on the true story of Alan Turing, the mathematics professor at Cambridge who is historically thought of being the main contributor to the invention of the original digital computer. The film follows the story of Alan and a group of highly talented mathematicians and scientists who attempt to break Enigma, a code encryption machine used by Germany in World War II to encrypt messages. The machine was thought to be unbreakable until this elite group came along. This group at Bletchley Park is responsible for the breaking of Enigma, resulting in a war shortened by over 2 years meaning millions of lives saved.
This film covers 2 major story lines: the Bletchley Park military project, but also of Alan Turing’s sexuality. In the time of the war, it was illegal to be homosexual. Throughout the story, there are flashbacks to Alan’s childhood. The audience is let in on a little secret through this part of Alan’s life: that he is gay, but the characters in Alan’s life are unaware of it. Alan is forced to hide this part of himself for almost the entire film because of the consequences that could come about if he told the truth. Slowly, other people around Alan start to discover this aspect of his life and react in different ways, ranging from understanding to (spoiler alert)even blackmail. This true story has remained a tightly held secret for years, until 1970, when the story was declassified.
In 2013, Alan Turing was given a posthumous royal pardon by the Queen regarding his conviction of gross indecency (the nicer sounding name of a homosexuality conviction). The Imitation Game was released in 2014, just one year after Turing’s pardon. This film is socially relevant through this fact, because of the Queen reversing his conviction and stoking the fire of the story of Bletchley Park.
The Imitation Game is not your typical war film. It is more similar to movies like The King’s Speech, with Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter. Both of these movies focus not on the fighting part of a war, but more on the background, inconspicuous jobs. The King’s Speech is about King George VI and his quest to speak with confidence to lead his country in World War II. If you’re looking for an explosion, blood-filled scenes type of film, The Imitation Game is not that. Personally, that type of movie, explosions and guts, is not my cup of tea, so The Imitation Game has the perfect balance for me.
Overall, this film will warm and break your heart, restore and destroy your faith in humanity, and rip you apart and put you back together before you realize what happened.
Grade: A+. I have tried and failed at finding a fault within this film.
