Biographies,
extraordinary true stories, stories of overcoming adversity… All much beloveds
of Hollywood and the awards season – and we did see quite a few extraordinary
ones come out this year, that’s for sure… And although it ultimately only got he "little gold man" for Best Writing, the one that actually – in one way or
another – had the most tongues wagging all over the world was The Imitation
Game…
One of the
pieces of headline news was the gay rights campaign Benedict Cumberbatch has
started, aiming for the pardon of all the men, alive or deceased who were
convicted “of homosexuality” like Alan Turing. Another was the outburst Cumberbatch made
concerning racial equality in the film industry, which in turn created a whole
new discussion in its own right… And indeed, what is the point of art if it
does not force us to think, to feel and to change… But before we get to all of
that, let’s take a look at the man, his life and the film that was made about
it – for indeed, the fear at this point is that we may well lose the film
itself in the discussion surrounding it!
The story
is, as we all know, that of Alan Turing. Nobody was sure what to make of Turing
in school. To call him an odd duck was to understate the fact, nor was this
simply a faze as his “Alan-ish” behaviour just gets more pronounced as he grows
older… However, if he is odd, Alan is no fool as he shows an absolute genius
for mathematics and a great personal interest in codes and cyphers. So
naturally when, during the Second World War, the Germans come up with the
seemingly undefeatable Enigma code, Alan turns up at the door of the Ministry
of Defence and explains that he is probably the only person who can decode it.
Alan is anti-social, infuriating in fact almost completely impossible to work
with as far as his colleagues are concerned, but they quickly realise something
else… He may also be right…
The rest,
as they say, is history… Turing had, in actual fact, discovered the first
“computer”. The very thing I am writing this review on right now. The thing you
are very probably reading it on – be it a telephone or a laptop… One does
wonder if, when he first “discovered” Christopher (the name of the first
computer) Turing realised what a huge chunk of everyday life he had, in fact,
shaped… (He had a truly extraordinary technical mind, so in actual fact he may
well have done). I think it was quite well timed and quite appropriate in all,
we do live in the internet generation and it’s not such a bad thing that we
find out how it all began…
The
thematics and the discussions it will start aside, you will get annoyed with
bits of this film. Oh sure, Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely brilliant from
beginning to end, as is Keira Knightly who uses the characters warmth to play
an absolutely lovely contrast to Turing who is, for lack of a better
description, all odd corners and elbows sticking out… Looking back and reading
descriptions of Turing, it is quite clear that he was very probably somewhere
on the autistic spectrum. However the film does not fall into the trap of
harping on the fact that he was some sort of autistic savant. This kind of
diagnosis was quite rare at the time, so we are simply presented with the facts
and left to draw our own conclusions. What the film does do however, with
annoying Hollywoodiness, (yes it’s a word. I have just decided it’s a word, so
it is a word. Henceforth) is repeat ad nauseum
the adage that “Sometimes it’s the people you think the least of who
accomplish the most extraordinary things”. Once would have been more than
enough. Twice if you guys really wanted to push it. You didn’t need a character
saying the phrase every 20 minutes. The audience is not entirely stupid and we
are quite capable of seeing that Turing is overcoming some truly spectacular
demons and coming in, as the underdog, “winning the day”. Also, I didn’t “get”
the cutaways to Turing running. I mean don’t get me wrong, Cumberbatch running
and showing off his muscles is always a welcome sight to my sore eyes. I just
didn’t get what they were doing in the story. Apart from clearly visualise
Turing’s struggling. Only problem being that Benedict Cumberbatch is quite capable
as an actor of showing this to us with no need to cutaways to him running but,
you know…
Turing may
well have won the day and (indirectly) the war, but his life was cut tragically
short, when, after being condemned for “indecency” and forced to undergo
chemical castration, he took his own life, aged 41. And it is very, very right
that the film should be the starting point and a spearhead for the pardon of
all the men that were condemned so unjustly and made to suffer in jail or by
submitting to chemical castration and who didn’t have the advantage of being
Alan Turing to ease their way to a pardon.
It is a
sign of the great quality of the film that it overcomes all the
“mainstreamisms” and “spoon feeding” in it to be the masterpiece it is. Part of
it is the cast and the true show of talent and dedication we see from them. But
it’s main saving grace is of course the strength of the story – a film can have
whatever else it wants, if it has a weak story, it is doomed from the start.
And it doesn’t get stronger or more unbelievable than Turing’s story…It is
realism and the humanity of the whole affair, the fact that Joan Clarke (Keira
Knightly’s character). Because not everyone will be able to completely
sympathise with an a-social maths genius with autistic tendencies. But a man
struggling with a society that doesn’t understand and his own personal demons
to fulfil what he knows to be his destiny, now that – on some level – we can
all relate to.
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