Film Review - The Imitation Game (Cert 12a)

The Imitation Game tells the extraordinary story of the group of brilliant young cryptologists at Bletchley Park who broke the German Enigma code thereby shortening the Second World War and saving millions of lives in the process. It focuses on the mathematics genius Alan Turing, who pioneered computers and built a ma-chine to decode the German army, navy and airforce signals. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the troubled ge-nius with sensitivity and extraordinary lightness of touch bringing out his social awkwardness, shyness bor-dering on a kind of aspergers and quicksilver mind. His relations with everyone around him are made diffi-cult by a manner which disguises huge emotional turmoil, the sources of which are revealed in a series of flashbacks. Terrible bullying at his public school and great love for a fellow pupil who dies of tuberculosis. Turing’s character is revealed through encounters with his team and superiors at Bletchley Park, the wartime codes and cyphers centre which was the forerunner of GCHQ. His lifelong battle with a misunderstanding and often hostile authority is brought out through clashes with a Naval Commander, Alistair Denniston, played by a suitably stiff-upper-lip Charles Dance who wants to reign in the undisciplined Turing. Members of Turing’s own team at first are also bewildered by his whole approach and as they begin to realise what an incredible man he is they are slowly won around. There is a powerful scene in the film when Commander Denniston wants to shut down the machine Turing is building and dismiss him. The team-members stand up for him despite their misgivings. A major theme underlying the film is Alan Turing’s homosexuality for which he is prosecuted after the war. This is examined by means of a love interest at Bletchley Park in the shape of Keira Knightley who plays a shy girl with a brilliant mind whom Turing offers to marry so she can escape the shadow of her parents and stay on at Bletchley. There is an understanding between them about his nature which serves as a metaphor-ical device for explaining the social, emotional and legal minefield which is Turing’s life. The twist and turns of wartime intelligence, spies and the attendant compromises with truth which have to be reached is personi-fied in the figure of Stewart Menzies, a smooth Mark Strong, of M16 who is overseeing the operation and manipulating all for the greater good of winning the war. The theme of what Churchill called the truth being guarded by lies is effectively examined and the scene between Menzies and Turing dealing with secret knowledge of several kinds - Menzies indicates he knows Turing’s secret - his homosexuality - and therefore must co-operate in not revealing the identity of the Soviet spy in the camp. The relations between team-members are sensitively drawn bringing out the frustrations of highly gifted people under unimaginable stress in close proximity. The easy-going affable Hugh Alexander, played by Matthew Goode, and the friendly John Cairncross, Allen Leach, who is leading a double life as well as the youngest member, Matthew Beard, worried about his brother at sea. The eureka moment, when Turing discovers how to break the Enigma code, is a cinematic set-piece of great charm. The joy is followed by the terrible realisation that they must keep the breakthrough a secret by using the knowledge to best advantage in the conduct of the war. In other words they have to decide which convoys at sea to save by warning of U-boats or armies to assist and which to let be destroyed so as to keep the Germans from knowing their code has been broken. It remained the biggest secret of the war and was known as Ultra. Teams of codebreakers were employed to perpetuate the deception that the code had not been broken whilst the decision-makers and strategists could use the invaluable intelligence. The style of the film incorporates voice-over and flashback particularly between wartime and Manchester in 1951 when Alan Turing comes to attention of the police when his flat is burgled. The policeman in charge of the investigation, played by Rory Kinnear, discovers that the maths professor has a classified war record and wants to know more. This is the period of Soviet spies and Cold War paranoia. Meanwhile Turing is charged with gross indecency. The post-war treatment of Alan Turing is one of lasting shame - a man who should have been a national hero was forced to take oestrogen hormone drugs which eventually led him to suicide because his mind was affected. The film dealt with themes reminiscent of a powerful play by Hugh Whiting featuring Turing - Breaking the Code - which deals with both the Enigma code and the social-conventional codes of the time. The contribution to winning the war that Turing and team made and the foundations he laid of modern com-puter science have been belatedly recognised. The Queen recently gave Turing a posthumous pardon and the wider work of the codebreakers has been uncovered and properly celebrated by historians, writers, play-wrights and film-makers. And should be by us all.