The Imitation Game (2014): Brilliant Actor, Enigmatic Subject

The Imitation Game stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, Star Trek Into Darkness) as Alan Turing, the brilliant British mathematician, perhaps best known as the genius who headed the secret team that broke Germany’s supposedly unsolvable Enigma ciphers during WW II, a feat generally acknowledged to have shortened that war by two or more years, saving millions of lives. Turing is also renowned for his groundbreaking work on programmable computing systems and is considered the father of computer science.  In recent years, more attention has been paid to Turing’s persecution and prosecution as a homosexual in the early 1950s, which led to his 1954 suicide at age 41.

Turing’s story is fascinating and multifaceted. The movie, however, focuses primarily on his work during The War.  He is depicted as a socially awkward, intellectually narcissistic, Aspergerish fellow, in many ways unlikeable and difficult to work with, yet unmistakably a genius. There was quite a lot at stake in the effort to break the encoded Nazi messages, of course, which lends tension and urgency to the proceedings right off the bat. Turing’s difficult personality, his seeming disdain toward his coworkers, and, well, his other-ness, created antagonisms and serious friction with many of his colleagues. These circumstances, exacerbated by our knowledge of Turing’s sexual orientation (which, if revealed, would have cost him his job), add to the drama.

 And yet … and yet, we pull for him, we want him to be accepted, want it to work out, feel he deserves this. Turing seems so alone. His social ostracism, though largely of his own making, pains us. We suffer his solitude and isolation along with him or perhaps for him, given his obliviousness to social life.   We want him to succeed because he needs to, but also because we share his certainty that he is superior, and because somehow, despite the walls he has erected, we feel his humanness.

Some of this is in the writing, but most, I believe, must be credited to the tremendous, layered acting performance of Cumberbatch. How he conveys so much, given the emotional reserve and psychological constraints of his character, is uncanny. He nails every scene (and he’s in every scene).  Ben, as he is known, has played similar character types before, notably the buttoned up, exceedingly proper Christopher Tietjens in the BBC production of Parades End and the brilliant, excitable Sherlock Holmes (also a likely Asperger’s personality) in the BBC’s Sherlock series. His Alan Turing impersonation, however, is deeper, more complete, and quietly moving.

Cumberbatch is aided by a sterling performance by Keira Knightly, who personifies the role of Joan Clarke, a young female mathematician. Clarke was a real person (as are most of the characters portrayed in The Imitation Game). Though gifted, she had to overcome the prevailing prejudices against professional women generally and among the science crowd in particular. Turing was more interested in performance than in any cultural bias (which he probably did not understand, anyway), and invited her to join his team.  Working by his side, she became one of Turing’s closest colleagues. I’m pretty sure that Clarke wasn't as glamorous as Knightley, but the glamour is played down, and her characterization is believable and sympathetic. The fact that Clarke was a woman may have made it easier for Turing to relax a bit with her; and the film does a fine job of showing how they became close. The interplay between Knightly and Cumberbatch provides the opportunity for the latter to open up a little, making his character more sympathetic as well.

The other players are uniformly good, too, particularly Mark Strong as Stewart Menzies, the head of

the super secret MI6 spy agency; Charles Dance as Commander Denniston, Turing’s immediate superior and adversary, who takes an immediate dislike to our hero from their first encounter; and Allen Leech (Tom Branson in Downton Abbey) as John Cairncross, a colleague with secrets of his own.

In addition to the Enigma code-breaking years, the picture gives us some flashbacks to Turing’s pre-university school days, when he first recognized that he was gay, as he developed a close attachment with another boy - an ill-fated relationship that unfortunately exacerbated his natural inclination to shy away from friendship and intimacy with others. And there are flash-forwards to the period of his criminal prosecution, when this British hero was treated so shabbily by an ungrateful nation.

Part of the reason the nation was so ungrateful is that Turing’s wartime achievements, indeed the entire Enigma episode and related intelligence activities at Bletchley Park, remained a closely guarded state secret for over twenty years after The War.  The Imitation Game alludes to this in its post-war sequence, when police investigators look into Turing’s war record and find it empty. That most people were unaware of Turing’s wartime accomplishments does not excuse the homophobic laws of the time, nor the fact that those who knew apparently chose not to come to his defense, however clandestinely.

Turing’s suicide is not portrayed in this movie, although it is somewhat pretentiously referenced in a postscript, along with some reference to the number of homosexuals prosecuted before the UK’s laws were finally changed. I call this pretentious, because it seems to me that if the filmmakers wanted to make a point regarding the persecution of gays in general or of Alan Turing in particular, they could more seamlessly have integrated this concern into their narrative; it felt tacked on to me. Certainly, his death should have been depicted in the film. As Anthony Lane noted in his review in the New Yorker, the circumstances were quite cinematic. Turing died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a half eaten apple found beside his bed. According to his biographers, his favorite fairy tale was Snow White, and he loved the poisoned apple scene in the Disney movie.  

This movie could have been better in other respects. Turing’s life, his accomplishments, and his final torment are important, and they resonate in our world. He was somewhat of an enigma himself,  and a more textured portrait of the man - a bit more truth, a bit less fictionalizing - might have elevated this very good motion picture to a great one. Not only does The Imitation Game ignore all of his achievements beyond the wartime Enigma work, it presses unnecessarily hard to deify Turing for that. As one example, the film strongly (and falsely) implies that his genius was exclusively responsible for breaking the Enigma codes, while his colleagues sat around seemingly contributing nothing.   There’s no question that this man was amazing; those who worked with him all attest to that. But breaking Enigma was, in reality, a collaborative effort led by Alan Turing; why not show that?

I carp because I really liked and enjoyed The Imitation Game, yet felt let down by its shortcomings. But if you have not yet seen this movie, let me be clear: I recommend it. Highly. The superb acting is reason enough to go see it. Plus, the story is compelling, thought provoking and never dull.  At my viewing, the audience applauded at the end.

It’s that kind of movie.  

In wide release.