The Imitation Game

[peter]

This great film about the Bletchley Park efforts to break the infamous enigma code stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the genius mathmetician Alan Turing and Keira Knightly as his co-worker and close friend Joan Clarke.
The film charts the highs and lows of that struggle and has all the stock characters - aloof service personnel, devious secret service agents and oddball geneii, but striding above it all is Cumberbatch's brilliant performance as the difficult (quite possibly autistic) and distant Turing. Told in flashback, the film becomes evermore heart wrenching as the noose closes around this man on whom the very success of the allies in winning the war was dependant. Never popular, it was Turing's homosexuality that was used in the end to destroy him, effected by his own hand a year after being sentenced to chemical castration by the courts on the charge of gross indecency - ie being gay.

The film is a good two hours watch with fine performances all round and good screenplay, but for me the overriding effect was to highlight the true enormity of both Turing's contribution and the outrage perpetrated against him following the service he did which remains ongoing to this very day. I am ashamed for my country.

[Rigel]

Did the movie seem to end a bit abruptly to you? I find this frequently happens with movies based on historic figures or events; they tell what happened during a particular period of time, and then they suddenly stop.

I really enjoyed the performance of both Cumberbatch and Knightley, but for my own tastes I would have preferred more of the interrogator from the flash forwards. I feel like an opportunity was missed there to give the movie... something. To make it something more than a pure recitation of events.

For me, this goes in the "good but forgettable history films," with a lot of musician biographies. The Stephen Hawking one, "Theory of Everything," similarly disappointed me.

[peter]

Fair comments Rigel. I'm not the greatest fan of 'biopics', so the concentration on this, the most significant part of Turing's life, was not a problem for me. The flashbacks to his school days also I think, added some depth. But yes - I'd agree with your good rather than great rating. What will stay with me most assuredly is my contempt for a system that could treat a man so.