Alan Turing’s short but bustling life could keep the biopic industry in business for years.
There are his years at the Sherborne boys’ school, where the future code-breaker and pioneer of theories that influenced the fields of computer technology and artificial intelligence first began exploring mathematics and his homosexuality. There is his stint at King’s College in Cambridge, where he expanded his intellectual and sexual horizons. There is the Bletchley Park phase, where Turing joined a team of code-breakers and cryptoanalysts in breaching seemingly unbreakable German cipher-based communication systems, contributing to the Allied victory over Adolf Hitler. There is the post-war period spent on various game-changing projects in the field of computers and morphobiology. And then there was his arrest and prosecution for being a homosexual, and his possible suicide at the age of 41 in 1954.
Andrew Hodges’s authoritative biography Alan Turing: The Enigma takes 736 pages to encapsulate the life of this singular talent. Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game clocks 114 minutes and commits the simplest and most appealing chapter of Turing’s life to the screen. Hodges’s sprawling account, which goes so far as to reproduce Turing’s theorems and formulae, presents immense adaptation challenges. As a result, screenwriter Graham More sticks to Bletchley Park, home to a long, complex operation, involving many personnel, which benefitted considerably from an early breakthrough by the Polish intelligence.
History fail, histrionics A
The Polish are nowhere to be seen in the very British period piece, whose handsome production values and glossy cinematography go far in masking its modest scope. The Imitation Game strips down the vast code-breaking project to make it seem like the effort of only a handful of individuals, of whom Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) matters the most. The movie doesn’t quite work as a credible account of how Bletchley Park functioned, since the major breakthrough is presented as unconvincing eureka moments. Screenplay writer Graham Moore resolutely claims his right to cinematic liberty by concocting or reinterpreting facts to ensure that Turing is always at the centre of the action even when history shows that he wasn’t.
The infidelity to historical accuracy is strange, considering that there was no shortage of drama either at Bletchley Park or in Turing’s life during this period. Moore and Tyldum miss out on a startling visual from Hodges’s book – Turing cycled to work while wearing a gas mask since he was allergic to pollen – and downplay the extent to which his short-time fiancée and Bletchley Park collaborator Joan Clark (Keira Knightley) knew of his homosexuality.
However, while The Imitation Game is historically inaccurate, it’s histrionically spot-on. The narrative flows smoothly despite tackling three time periods (Turing’s present, his Bletchley Park days, and his school years), the casting and performances work, and Cumberbatch, in his first lead role, is an energetic and compelling presence.
Hodges writes movingly about Turing that “like any homosexual man, he was living an imitation game, not in the sense of conscious play-acting, but by being accepted as a person he was not”. The movie doesn’t quite explore Turing’s struggles with his body, his self and his sexuality, but there’s no mistaking the filmmakers’ empathy for his anguish.
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There are his years at the Sherborne boys’ school, where the future code-breaker and pioneer of theories that influenced the fields of computer technology and artificial intelligence first began exploring mathematics and his homosexuality. There is his stint at King’s College in Cambridge, where he expanded his intellectual and sexual horizons. There is the Bletchley Park phase, where Turing joined a team of code-breakers and cryptoanalysts in breaching seemingly unbreakable German cipher-based communication systems, contributing to the Allied victory over Adolf Hitler. There is the post-war period spent on various game-changing projects in the field of computers and morphobiology. And then there was his arrest and prosecution for being a homosexual, and his possible suicide at the age of 41 in 1954.
Andrew Hodges’s authoritative biography Alan Turing: The Enigma takes 736 pages to encapsulate the life of this singular talent. Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game clocks 114 minutes and commits the simplest and most appealing chapter of Turing’s life to the screen. Hodges’s sprawling account, which goes so far as to reproduce Turing’s theorems and formulae, presents immense adaptation challenges. As a result, screenwriter Graham More sticks to Bletchley Park, home to a long, complex operation, involving many personnel, which benefitted considerably from an early breakthrough by the Polish intelligence.
History fail, histrionics A
The Polish are nowhere to be seen in the very British period piece, whose handsome production values and glossy cinematography go far in masking its modest scope. The Imitation Game strips down the vast code-breaking project to make it seem like the effort of only a handful of individuals, of whom Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) matters the most. The movie doesn’t quite work as a credible account of how Bletchley Park functioned, since the major breakthrough is presented as unconvincing eureka moments. Screenplay writer Graham Moore resolutely claims his right to cinematic liberty by concocting or reinterpreting facts to ensure that Turing is always at the centre of the action even when history shows that he wasn’t.
The infidelity to historical accuracy is strange, considering that there was no shortage of drama either at Bletchley Park or in Turing’s life during this period. Moore and Tyldum miss out on a startling visual from Hodges’s book – Turing cycled to work while wearing a gas mask since he was allergic to pollen – and downplay the extent to which his short-time fiancée and Bletchley Park collaborator Joan Clark (Keira Knightley) knew of his homosexuality.
However, while The Imitation Game is historically inaccurate, it’s histrionically spot-on. The narrative flows smoothly despite tackling three time periods (Turing’s present, his Bletchley Park days, and his school years), the casting and performances work, and Cumberbatch, in his first lead role, is an energetic and compelling presence.
Hodges writes movingly about Turing that “like any homosexual man, he was living an imitation game, not in the sense of conscious play-acting, but by being accepted as a person he was not”. The movie doesn’t quite explore Turing’s struggles with his body, his self and his sexuality, but there’s no mistaking the filmmakers’ empathy for his anguish.
