The Imitation Game (2014, Dir. Morton Tyldum):
Behind every code is an enigma.
— Tagline for The Imitation Game
Let’s get one thing straight: The Imitation Game is exactly what you would expect from a prestige picture based on the life of Alan Turing. It is tastefully shot and acted, lacquered to a fine shine, professional in every detail, and without an iota of surprise. Given that Turing was the prime codebreaker who helped the Allies crack the Nazis’ Enigma code machine in World War II and save thousands if not millions of lives, and was also the father of the modern computer, not to mention a closet homosexual who was essentially persecuted to death in the early ’50s, perhaps the filmmakers reckoned that they didn’t need to do much more than play it close to the vest — and maybe they weren’t far wrong to do so. But enigmatic is clearly the one thing The Imitation Game is not, despite what the movie’s tagline says.
At just about every turn, the movie makes the obvious dramatic choice, and then thumps hard on that choice relentlessly. It isn’t enough that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Turing accomplishes a Herculean task; he also has to put up with a disapproving superior (Charles Dance), who threatens to shut his project down unless he can come through in the eleventh hour (guess what happens). It’s not enough that Keira Knightley’s Joan Clarke (the sole female among the codebreakers, essentially standing in for the entire Bletchley Circle) is a woman in a man’s world; the point must be driven home in her initial job interview when she is callously told to go to the secretarial pool’s office. It isn’t enough that recruits are found for Turing’s team through a crossword puzzle in the local papers; the crosswords must be done under flickery lights at the height of the Blitz, as London shakes and hundreds huddle Underground. It’s not enough that the team must make the hard decision not to save endangered Allied units once it cracks the code, for fear that the Nazis will divine the truth and change their code machines; we must also be told that one of the codebreakers has a brother on an Allied convoy that will be sunk within minutes if they don’t publicize their triumph. It’s not enough that Turing was an unusual man who pulled off unusual feats; we must have a hooky line for audiences to hold onto just in case they don’t get it, so we’re given this one, three times: “It’s always the people who no one imagines anything of who do more than you can imagine.” Remember that one, Oscar voters.
Yet despite all that, it’s still easy to get caught up in the sweep of The Imitation Game‘s story. Like Turing, the film is at its best when it gets down to the nitty-gritty of codebreaking, and throwing around statistics and probabilities. Screenwriter Graham Moore, working from Andrew Hodges’ book Turing: The Enigma, does a decent job of telescoping events and maintaining our interest in the process of breaking Enigma. He’s less successful at giving Turing the man a fair day: apart from some flashbacks with young Turing (excellently played by Alex Lawther) and his chaste first love Christopher (Jack Bannon), little about his inner life is allowed to interact with the narrative, until it comes time for him to be martyred. Given Turing’s clipped dialogue and very Sherlockian ego (“I am in control because I know things that you do not”), it’s to Cumberbatch’s credit that he’s able to suggest the man’s inchoate, inexpressible passions. Turing is supposed to be unknowable, but Cumberbatch lets us in on how he feels, the tension bubbling just underneath those high cheekbones and translucent eyes. He’s matched well with Knightley’s Clarke, a veddy English lady who’s sick and tired of being proper. When these two misfits agree to get engaged for convenience’s sake, both full knowing that theirs will not be a typical marriage, the film briefly finds its soul.
Sadly, most of the rest of The Imitation Game is surface-level — a pretty surface, but only a surface nonetheless. Like A Beautiful Mind, it downplays the romance of science in favor of the romance of romance, and like that film, the pivotal “eureka” moment for the protagonist occurs when his companion tries to hit on a girl. Director Morton Tyldum throws in some random news reels and bits of war footage to remind us from time to time that something important is going on; otherwise it’s all desultory camera set-ups and shots. Some moments and actors stand out: Mark Strong gets to bask in the shadows, and have the most fun, as morally squishy MI-6 agent Stewart Menzies. There’s an interesting thread about how Turing must “fake” normal human social behavior to earn his colleagues’ trust, and when he “fakes” his old callous, detached manner in order to break up with Clarke, it’s the closest the movie comes to poignance. In contrast, the finale is pure pap, as Clarke assures a declining Turing in his final years that he is a special man and a hero, and we get the inevitable sight of Cumberbatch in tears, blubbering for that Oscar for all he’s worth. It’s a moment which most assuredly did not take place in real life, but presenting the truth — that Turing died miserable, alone, and unrecognized for his brilliant accomplishments — wouldn’t usher the audience out of the theater on an emotional high. “Am I a machine? Am I a person?” Turing asks a police inspector (and us) near the end, and the answer is never in doubt: in a battle between knotty humanity and middlebrow moviemaking, the machine wins every single time.
