Movie Review: The Imitation Game

Movie review: The Imitation Game

by Christian Gould, reporter

 The Imitation Game is a riveting historical movie starring such talented actors as Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, and Mark Strong. This movie stirred attention in the movie-goer circles. Warning: This synopsis contains spoilers.

The movie is the story of British mathematician Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) who has been hired in 1939 by the newly-created MI6 to crack Nazi codes at Bletchley Park and win the second world war. Instead of breaking the codes by hand with his partners, Alan begins to create a machine that would crack every code that the Nazis throw at them. The military approves of his program, and gives him the necessary funds to create the machine. In order to work on this program, Alan enlists the help of the lovely Joan Clarke (Knightley). As time goes on, the British army grows tired of wasting it’s funds on a project that they soon lose faith in. Also, Alan begins to feel pressure from Stewart Menzies (Strong) the MI6 agent who hired Alan. Is there a soviet spy in their mists? Do they think it is Turing? The machine is finally completed, but they have not yet been able to decode any Nazi messages. Alan delves  into a close workplace friendship with Joan. At one point, Joan is being pressured by her parents to leave Bletchley and come home. To prevent this from happening, Alan proposes to Joan (despite the fact that he is a homosexual). At a party celebrating the engagement, Alan admits to one of his workmates, John Cairncross (played by Allen Leech), that he is a homosexual. Also at the party, Alan and his team discover how to break the codes. Every code ends with “Heil Hitler,” so if they teach the machine to recognize that, it will be able to decode the rest of the message.

After the machine that Turing had made eventually worked and decoded every code the Nazis create, Alan and his team soon began to question the morals of the machine, but they continue with the project because that is what they were hired to do. The work goes on, and the team uses their advance knowledge in statistics to determine which attacks to prevent and which ones to let happen. Soon, Alan discovers that the Soviet spy was none other than John Cairncross. John knows that Alan has discovered him, but threatens to expose that Alan is a homosexual if Alan tells the authorities that he is a spy. Alan goes to Joan’s home to warn her, but discovers Menzies there instead. Menzies discovers that Alan stole some papers from Bletchley to finish his machine, and threatens to blame Joan for the theft if Alan exposes John. Menzies meant to put John in the workhut, to give information to the Soviet’s without Churchill having to know. Alan has no choice, but because he cares for Joan, he pressures her to leave Bletchley. He even goes as far as to say that he doesn’t love her anymore, and that he only wanted her at Bletchley so he could use her to help break codes. She calls him a monster and stays at Bletchley. Eventually, they win the war, but all knowledge of Turing’s machine must be destroyed with the machine itself. Alan is crushed.

One great aspect of this film is the flashbacks and the flashforwards. Sometimes the film goes back to 1928 when Alan was a schoolboy who has fallen in love with a schoolmate of his named Christopher. Christopher was the one who got Alan interested in codes and cyphers. Christopher was Alan’s only friend, but Christopher dies of leukemia the next year. Alan was so depressed at the loss of his friend, that in the future he calls him machine “Christopher.” Sometimes the film goes forward to 1951 where Detective Robert Nock (played by Rory Kinnear) is investigating the mysterious circumstances of Alan Turing. Alan lives in York, and continues to work on a machine that will calculate and decode anything. Detective Nock thinks that Turing was doing something important during the war and might have even been a spy. Detective Nock discovers how Alan is a homosexual and when interrogating him, he hears the entire story of what work he did at Bletchley Park. Alan is convicted of homosexuality, and is put onto hormonal therapy to “cure” his homosexual tendencies. Essentially, the treatment is killing him. Joan goes to visit Alan in 1953. She notices his condition and offers to help him. He denies the help because he wants to “get better” and he needs to keep working on his machine, his “Christopher.” In the end, Alan Turing, killed himself in 1954 by cyanide poisoning. He never finished his machine.

In the end, this film wins a ten out of ten. The acting was good, imagery was excellent, and the plot had the audience on the edge of their seats and in tears with the conclusion. The musical score was good, and there was not one deviation from the actual story. It was a wonderfully composed historical film if ever there was one.

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