Rating: 5/5 Falcons
Initially, I watched “The Imitation Game” (released in 2014) only to receive extra credit for World History teacher Mike Davey’s World War II unit. It was February break, and I found I could pretty easily watch it online. Plus, the film topic seemed interesting enough, and my friend had agreed to watch it with me.
So, having received the movie recommendation during class, we met at the Saratoga Library Group Study room — perhaps not your conventional cinema location. Some of the extra credit movies from World History weren’t the most riveting, in my view, but “The Imitation Game” exceeded our expectations on all fronts — acting, storyline, characters, themes and purpose.
Directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, the film is based on a biography of Alan Turing, a British cryptographer and mathematician. He is credited with cracking Enigma, which was notorious at the time for being the “unbreakable” encoding machine used for all Nazi military communication during World War II. However, being highly classified, this feat was only made public in the 1970s, decades after Germany’s defeat. Today, Turing is also known for his work as the father of modern computers.
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, the movie alternates between three different points of his life, beginning in the present-day of 1951, years after the Allied victory. After reporting a house break-in, Turing is investigated by two police officers, one of whom later suspects him of being a Soviet spy. During the interrogation, Turing recounts his experience at Bletchley Park, where he and his team solved the Nazi code.
This brings us to the past, where Turing — a high school student — is a severely bullied mathematical genius. He has one close friend, an older boy named Christopher Morcom, who introduces cryptography to him.
Over the course of their friendship, Turing realizes he is gay and has romantic feelings for Morcom, but never reveals it to him. Tragically, Morcom dies of tuberculosis shortly after this realization, and Turing’s grief shapes the direction of his later work in imagining computers and even artificial intelligence in an effort to immortalize Morcom’s “soul” through lines of code.
Turing goes on to become a fellow at King’s College, Cambridge, and is recruited by the British government to crack Enigma along with a small, top-secret group of the country’s best intellectuals. Although he has difficulty fitting in with others, he eventually gains respect from the group. Together, they build a machine — nicknamed Christopher, after Turing’s childhood friend — that can decode Enigma almost instantaneously, overcoming major efficiency issues.
In spite of their success, Turing’s team then find themselves in a moral dilemma, weighing lives based on numbers and calculus. To ensure that Germany did not find out that Enigma was cracked, the British government only utilized the decoded information sparingly, sacrificing the lives of soldiers and civilians but, at the same time, saving an estimated 12-14 million more.
The movie returns to the present 20 years later, when Turing is charged with “gross indecency” for being homosexual and sentenced to chemical castration, despite his hidden heroic deeds during World War II. Near the end of the movie, we see Turing endure physical and psychological decline, as a result of his treatment. While one of his friends from Bletchley — a woman named Joan Clarke, to whom he was once engaged before revealing his homosexuality — tries to help him, her efforts are in vain.
Turing committed suicide through cyanide poisoning in 1954, before his work with Enigma was ever acknowledged. Before his death, he faced judicial persecution for his sexuality at the hands of the same government he helped win a war only a few years before. Although he was posthumously given a royal pardon in 2013, his story illustrates the persecution of homosexual individuals and gives voice to the hidden heroes of World War II.
Of course, the movie makers took liberties with historical details, and many events in the movie never actually took place. For example, Morcom actually died a few years later than what the movie suggests, Turing’s relationship with Clarke was heavily dramatized and Turing never revealed his work with Enigma to the police during investigation. Yet, the core ideas and themes remain the same, and the dramatic adjustments help add to the emotional impact of the movie.
Even as someone who rarely pays attention to who the actors are, I could tell this movie features very strong actors who deliver their parts with great emotional accuracy.
Quite deservingly, the movie and its actors earned four major awards and received 22 award nominations total. Generating a total of $233.6 million in the box office, “The Imitation Game” brought more attention to the engineers behind Enigma, and it artfully incorporated Turing’s personal story into the movie.
Both my friend and I were kept on our toes the entire 1.5 hours we spent watching it, even if our library-based mini-cinema wasn’t exactly the most ideal. When returning to my World History class the following week, I secretly felt smug when Davey brought up the Enigma code, and I already knew all about it.
Whether you’re learning about World War II or not, “The Imitation Game” is a truly memorable film, especially if you’re interested in history. Even if some parts are exaggerated or inaccurate, the criticisms of homophobia and the recognition of these World War II heroes are still relevant to us today, more than 70 years since these events took place.
Extra credit or not, I rate this movie a solid 5 out of 5 Falcons.
