The Imitation Game
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear
Even 70 years after it ended, the Second World War continues to yield cinematic stories of valour and suspense that enthrall viewers. The war, of course, had many heroes, many of whom were honoured and celebrated in their lifetimes. Many of them saw frontline action, and are the more easily recognised for that.
But far more game-changing heroes abounded, far away from the warfront, whose efforts contributed just as significantly in ensuring Allied victory in the war against Nazism, but whose identities or war efforts haven’t sufficiently been acknowledged. The Imitation Game pays homage to Alan Turing, one of the less-known heroes, whose intervention, even by Winston Churchill’s acknowledgement, helped end the war two years sooner and saved millions of lives.
Turing was a maladjusted mathematician, who led the British race to crack the German telecommunications code Enigma. It was virtually impossible for humans to unscramble the codes, since the Germans changed the settings at midnight every night, so Turing persuades MI6—and even secures Churchill’s sanction—to build a machine that stands a more realistic chance of cracking it. (That machine is widely acknowledged as the prototype of today’s computer.)
Turing and his all-star team of men (and a sole woman, Joan Clarke) work on the top-secret mission, plodding on for months, battling mathematical egos and the weary impatience of military commanders ever ready to pull the plug.
That alone makes for a gripping tale, but there’s another, more personal narrative of Turing’s own eventual dishonour, in the years immediately after the war, for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. Turing’s tortured, many-layered character is brought vividly to life by Benedict Cumberbatch, in the role he was born to essay.
Venky Vembu
The Imitation Game
Genre:Biopic
Director:Morten Tyldum
Cast:Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear
Bottomline:A gripping narrative about the quirky ‘father’ of the modern computer.
