The Imitation Game

"Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."

Alan Turing was a remarkable man that made a huge difference to the world, but was persecuted nevertheless. His work in breaking the German Enigma code had a profound impact on the outcome of World War II, yet he encountered extreme prejudice for being a homosexual. Now his story has been transformed into a film in Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game.

At the height of World War II, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), a mathematician and avid crossword enthusiast joins a team of cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park to decipher the German Enigma code, a encoding system that is used on every German message, but which changes daily. Turing immediately gets off on the wrong foot with both his superior, Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) and his colleagues, particularly Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode).

Whilst they begin originally by attempting to decipher each day's settings by hand, Turing soon designs a machine to calculate the settings quickly and automatically, taking inspiration from a similar Polish machine. Turing fails to get support from either Denniston or his co-workers, but after he sends a letter to Churchill, the project is soon moved forward, with Turing in charge. He develops a crossword designed to find potential candidates for the project, and it is through this that Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) joins the project. The team continue to develop the machine, with the time pressures of a devastating war looming over them, all the while, Turing is hiding the fact that he is a homosexual, which was illegal at the time.

Mixing together three different periods of Turing's life; his childhood, his work with Enigma, and the period after the war, Morten Tyldum's English debut attempts to summarise the importance of Turing's work in a two hour film. A feat which it manages exceptionally well, albeit whilst following the rules of a typical biopic. Although its attempts to draw importance out of linkages between the different eras of his life can sometimes feel a bit forced, The Imitation Game is strong in structure and incredibly thought-provoking in content. Alan Turing's life has been depicted before, including documentaries, television movies and even a musical, but this film will hopefully draw more attention to the man. The only complaint I have about it, is that his persecution and death are somewhat downplayed and simply presented in what I like to call 'wrap-up text' towards the end of the film. For the sake of an additional twenty minutes, the film could have been more successful in acknowledging the prejudiced state of the world at that time.

In by far his best performance yet, Benedict Cumberbatch is phenomenal as Turing. His ability to transform himself into this unusual man, likely to have been autistic, is quite astounding. He even brings a hint of charm to the role as he delivers insulting but hilarious remarks. He's the one that makes this a fantastic film. Starring next to him, Knightly is also very good as Joan and rarely can anyone fault the stern acting ability of Charles Dance. Goode rounds off the cast as the typically dashing Hugh, and whilst he seems to spent most of his screen time in the corner, shrugging at Turing's unusual decisions, Mark Strong is fine as MI6 Major General Menzies.

The Imitation Game follows the likes of The Kings Speech and Lincoln as one of the great biographical films of recent years. It's skillfully constructed by Tyldum and fantastically acted by Benedict Cumberbatch, who'll likely receive an Oscar nomination for his performance.