The Imitation Game - Trailer 2:31
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Genius British logician and cryptologist Alan Turing helps crack Germany's Enigma Code during World War II but is later prosecuted by his government for illegal homosexual acts.
- news.com.au
- 25 Nov 2014
- Entertainment
The Imitation Game (M)
Director: Moren Tyldum (Headhunters)
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Charles Dance, Mark Strong.
Rating: 4 stars
Before, Turing and after
“Pay close attention. I will not pause. I will not repeat myself.”
This opening statement by the subject of The Imitation Game, mathematician Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch), is neither a threat, nor a warning.
It is merely a matter of fact. Inside the brutally efficient matrix of the Turing mind, repeating something already said is a waste of breath. Further explanations or clarifications of any kind are almost just as pointless.
What’s done is done. What to do next is all that counts.
A compelling true story of perseverance and persecution, The Imitation Game has a lot of information it must convey to its audience. Time is of the essence. And time was always running out for Alan Turing.
The film opens in the early 1940s, with World War II already well underway. In the race for strategic supremacy, the Nazis have burst clear of the Allies thanks to a brilliant piece of cutting-edge technology.
Its name is the Enigma machine. This small box generates a complex code that encrypts all Nazi messages transmitted throughout Europe.
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Compelling ... Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley in a scene from The Imitation Game. Source: Supplied
The Enigma code is considered beyond unbreakable. As it resets each morning at 6am, British data analysts only have less than a day to break it before having to start all over again.
Alan Turing, a 27-year-old academic recently recruited by British intelligence, may hold the key to unlocking the imposing mathematical mystery at the core of Enigma.
However, as The Imitation Game proceeds, that key is still only a theory inside Turing’s head. What’s more, Turing has severe difficulty relaying what he is after to superiors and colleagues alike.
Arrogant, temperamental and condescending — and that’s on a good day — Turing could well be his own worst enemy when it comes to realising his vital vision for defeating Enigma.
Later in The Imitation Game, Turing will indeed single-handedly overpower the might of Enigma: by building a contraption in a back shed in the village of Bletchley. That contraption, by the way, carried the design DNA that later spawned the personal computers we use in so many shapes and forms today.
However, while there can be no denying both the complexity and magnitude of Turing’s achievement — a triumph estimated to have brought forward the end of WWII by up to two years, saving millions of lives in doing so — The Imitation Game is equally concerned with one simple code Turing was never able to crack.
The basic social skills that organise and enhance our daily lives were never learned, let alone understood by Turing. Though this blinkered world view allowed Turing to see what his peers could not, it also accelerated an alienation after the war that would lead Alan Turing to a tragic end.
On a production level, The Imitation Game is executed dynamically on the same polished, prestige terms as The King’s Speech.
In many ways, it is a superior film, thanks largely to a sincere, yet steely determination to do full justice to a true story as demanding as it is rewarding.
While it will be a career-best performance from Cumberbatch (perfectly cast to take us inside an outsider such as Turing) that will inevitably be applauded here, the unyielding support he draws from castmates such as Keira Knightley, Charles Dance and Mark Strong proves crucial throughout.
