The Imitation Game Reviews

Alan Turing was a fascinating, complex person who deserves to be better known to the world. Likewise his story is important and deserves to be told rather than forgotten. Had high hopes for 'The Imitation Game', after hearing so many good things about it, and it ended up being one of my favourite films of 2014.

That 'The Imitation Game' is historically inaccurate and has distortions didn't offend me as much as some reviewers, biographical dramas are notorious for this so it's come to be expected by me (not that that is meant to be an excuse). All that was wanted was a film that made me think, moved me, was well made and well acted. 'The Imitation Game' was all those things and more.

It isn't perfect, the political elements are on the preachy side and there are a few strands that could have gone into more detail, Turing's sexuality should have gotten into more depth than it was.

However, 'The Imitation Game' is exceptionally well made. It's immaculately photographed and has some of the best production design of its best, especially in the costumes. The direction allows the film to be absorbing, while the music score is often hauntingly beautiful and never intrusive.

In terms of the script, 'The Imitation Game' does a wonderful job in provoking thought and providing emotional impact and nuances and fleshes the characters out with remarkable complexity. What could have been potentially dry treatment of the subject matter turned out to be fascinating, thrilling and very moving.

Benedict Cumberbatch gives his best performance of a very solid career, an outstanding portrayal that won't be forgotten for years to come. Keira Knightley is a sympathetic confidante and Charles Dance is excellent as always as his superior. The supporting cast are without complaint.

Overall, wonderful film and its acclaim is a long way from an enigma. 9/10 Bethany Cox

"Sono le persone che nessuno immagina che possano fare certe cose quelle che fanno cose che nessuno può immaginare..."
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The term “prestige film” isn’t inherently a bad thing. The concept of a film made to appeal to a broad adult audience – not the worst thing imaginable. It’s just when those films condescend to the audience, downplay the realities, and present the material in as ham-fisted a manner as possible that it becomes an issue.

Behold, The Imitation Game, a film that gives the impression of having been rolled out of the Weinstein assembly line to achieve maximum Oscar impact. This doesn’t feel like a truly thought-out story, but like cherry-picked themes and moments cobbled together to give the impression that they’re saying something important.

This is the kind that gives the term “prestige film” a bad reputation. An awkward mixture of repressed homosexuality, brilliant man does good deed, spy film, and sensitive portrait of a misfit, The Imitation Game tries to hit as many boxes as possible without focusing in on the more interesting or historically accurate ones.

Alan Turing’s homosexuality was a major factor in his life, and the film merely plays lip service towards. He is but another in a long line of gay characters in film or television who is gay in name only, heaven forbid we ever see him engage in his sexuality. If you know even the slightest bit of truth about Turing and his life, you will see why this is offensive. This is truly a poorly handled major bit of historical fact and character development that is white-washed over.

Even more troublesome is the way that Turing’s brilliance and homosexuality are treated as symptoms of his being slightly autistic. The real Turing was not, nor was he treated so poorly by his real-life contemporaries. These story telling choices are just plain odd. The real man was fascinating enough, so why did they feel the need to change him so completely?

The lone saving grace of this film are the two main performances from Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. However, neither one of them deserved award season consideration, as both of these performances have a general sense of being seen and done before by both actors. Cumberbatch in particular appears to be resting on a variation of Sherlock here, resting on a series of blinks and vocal tics instead of digging deeper into the truth. Knightley is solid, but her part is so underwritten, essentially playing Robin to Cumberbatch’s Batman.

Handsome looking, but unbelievably dull, The Imitation Game also traffics in moments that read as pure fiction. A long series of scenes in which these code breakers are deciding which groups of people get to live or die to try and hide information from the Germans reeks of Hollywood artifice. And no amount of lovely production design or period-accurate costumes can mask this. So here we have a film that infantilizes the main character’s homosexuality, commits obvious historical inaccuracies, and is an exercise in mass tedium (which is incidentally what I nicknamed the somehow Oscar nominated director, Morten Tyldum). Of course it got nominated a bunch during awards season, but thank god it (mostly) lost all of its races. Maybe even the Academy is getting tired of this particular strain of BBC-lite prestige bullshit.

Author: johnmcc150 from United Kingdom
15 November 2014

As the film announces at the start, it based on a true story. The essentials are true, and to get so much history into a film things have to be condensed. Unfortunately unnecessarily inaccurate things were portrayed which didn't save any time. For example, Turing mutters under his breath so most audiences will not notice, that the Poles made the first crucial breakthrough. By the start of the war, the Poles led by Marian Rejewski had been breaking Enigma for over six years and built the first machine, called a "bomba" in 1938.

In July 1939 the Poles passed on all the information to the French and British including details of the bomba and their successes at a meeting which included Denniston. The problem started to mount for the Poles and later the British when other rotors could be swapped in and the indicator method was changed by the Germans. The film is correct in showing that Turing's genius was using known words from the coded messages to reduce the myriad of possibilities. This idea happened in 1939 and so he started from the outset to design the British "bombes" to use this method, not after they had been running for months.

Four senior code-breakers, not just Alan Turing, but also Gordon Welchman, Stuart Milner-Barry and Hugh Alexander wrote to Churchill in 1941 over Denniston's head about the shortage of staff and praising Edward Travis. In February 1942, Denniston was demoted and transferred elsewhere. His successor, Edward Travis, transformed the procedures.

Cairncross, played by Downton's ex-chauffeur, never appeared at Bletchley until 1942 and the alleged blackmail is an unnecessary red-herring.

The idea that there would be a chart on the wall in Hut 8 showing the latest positions of all Atlantic convoys is laughable. This chart was in a secure bunker in Liverpool that was as closely guarded as Bletchley Park.

Turing's team had no input into how the information was to be used, but it is true that Ultra intelligence had to be supported by other information and so patrols were sent out to find what was known to be already there.

Lastly Turing would never, ever, have disclosed even the existence of Bletchley Park to a detective he had just met.

The performance of Benedict Comberbatch is exceptional, and the rest of the cast good. Keira Knightley is pretty enough to have turned even Turing, but, despite the lines that told us, she never gave the impression she had a double first in mathematics from Cambridge.

Good film, though it could have be closer to reality without making it longer or more complex.

Since I heard some really good things about this film, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, even though it might be a rather straightforward biopic, I really liked this movie a lot above all because it was a dealing with such a fascinating character. I mean, of course, we will never know for sure, maybe the guy was actually a major douchebag but there is no doubt that he was just brilliant, probably one of the greatest human minds that ever lived. I mean, not only the guy had pretty much single-handedly stopped WWII, the biggest war of all time, but he also invented the concept of computers, probably the biggest invention of the 20th century. Thanks to this movie, you get a glimpse of what this man could have been and I thought he was just fascinating, thanks to a really good performance by Benedict Cumberbatch. Unfortunately, not only was Alan Turing a great genius, but also really autistic but worse, even homosexual so, obviously, it was a little too much to handle for the British society and they pretty much killed one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived. Anyway, to conclude, I thought it was quite spellbinding and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested by this subject.

To paraphrase a friend... "The film simplifies his character to a point that borders on offensive. But even if you ignore the historical inaccuracies, it simply emphasizes the wrong parts of his fascinating, yet tragic life. It's slick, but hollow where it counts." Cumberbatch's performance is most excellent, can't see anyone else in this role.

I have been interested since I saw the trailer for this. I think Benedict Cumberbatch is an amazing actor. Here he leads an amazing cast of well known British actors. Alan Turing's behavior kind of reminds me of similarities with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. It seems a lot of people who are quite intelligent usually have problems socially as I've personally encountered. Although I'm far from treating people like worms I do get frustrated when people don't understand things that I think are simple. I had no idea homosexuality was against the law back in England in the 40s or before. You learn something new everyday. This was so smartly acted and the story is well edited and pulls together quite nicely. It's such a great film the more you think about everything involved. I recommend checking this out and learning a bit of important history albeit dramatized.