Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Imitation Game


Directed by Morten Tyldum.
2014. Rated PG-13, 114 minutes.
Cast:
Benedict Cumerbatch
Keira Knightley
Matthew Goode
Rory Kinnear
Charles Dance
Mark Strong
Allen Leech
Steven Waddington
Tuppence Middleton

Without turning this into a history class, we'll start with the fact that Germany was kicking everyone's butt, pretty handily winning World War II for quite some time, and leave it at that. Well, there is one other piece of info you'll need which the movie freely volunteers. A large part of their success was due to being able to stay one step ahead of Allied Forces. To do so, they transmitted messages via an encrypting machine called The Enigma. It put there messages into what was thought to be an uncrackable code thanks to all the fruitless man-hours put into trying to solve its riddle. To continue along that path, Great Britain decides to form a top secret team of the brightest minds they can find and put them on the job. One of these minds belongs to Alan Turing (Cumberbatch). Immediately after the team gets started, everyone realizes that he doesn't play well with others. While his co-workers keep trying to crack the code by hand, he puts all of his effort into designing a machine that will be able to do the job. Alan working on this machine while occasionally taking strides toward being an actual human being ensues.

In the lead, Benedict Cumberbatch is perfectly aloof, arrogant, and guarded. We don't necessarily like him, but we're intrigued by him. He knows that his intelligence combines with his demeanor to intimidate people. Turing brandishes this like a weapon. Watching him interact with people at work is akin to listening in on psychological warfare. In more social settings, it's like watching a robot trying to understand human emotion. Cumberbatch conveys all of this flawlessly, aided by excellently written dialogue and a wonderful supporting cast. As his main rival, Hugh Alexander, Matthew Goode is the cool cat of the bunch. He's good with the ladies, believes strongly in having a life outside of work, and yet, is still dedicated to his job. He is also quite vocal about his dislike of Alan. We don't mind because he often says the things we're thinking.


The true gem of the cast is its only woman of any consequence. As Joan Clarke, Keira Knightley brings a warmth missing from the rest of the film. Her scenes are full of life and humor. This includes a number of tender and funny moments that occur when she shares the screen with Cumberbatch. Those scenes hinge on the issue of Turing's sexuality which, by itself, is a subplot. The focus is mostly on him hiding it from people of authority due to the time in which all this takes place. Secondarily, it's about how this affects the relationship between Turing and Clarke. This is easily the most heartfelt aspect of the movie. We can see there is love between them even without sexual attraction, at least on his part. Knightley sells it to us so thoroughly we have no choice but to buy it.

As well as the relationship between Turing is Clarke is done, it highlights the largest issue with The Imitation Game. The overriding issue that has brought all these people together is approached with the same coldness that Turing himself is shown to employ. The best WWII movies, whether combat based or not, manage to humanize those involved and/or those affected in such a way that our empathy for them overshadows the foregone conclusion. That we know the outcome is rendered irrelevant other than it being used to make us feel how the film makers want us to feel. As viewers, we become trapped in the moment of their struggles, forgetting which side of history they fall on. This film never does that. It gives us office politics, computations, statistics, and a subplot about espionage clumsily slammed into place, but ultimately of no importance. No one on screen seems to actually be affected by the war until a late-film admission by one of Turing's co-workers. This is met with heartless logic. As a result, the film fails to make us feel anything with regard to its main plot.

As biopics go, The Imitation Game is a good one. Its stars all turn in outstanding performances led by Cumberbatch's Spock-like portrayal of Turing. It moves along swiftly enough that its runtime never becomes laborious. By the same token, the meat of the story isn't appetizing enough to sink our teeth into, nor succulent enough to savor if we do. This undermines the tastier sides to leave us with an adequate, yet not completely satisfying meal.

20 comments:

  1. I can see your point about the frostiness of the film but it didn't detract from my overall enjoyment of it. Of all the movies that competed for Oscar that year that I've seen, I've still to catch Selma and American Sniper, it's the one I liked the best. I think Birdman was the more inventive film and more deserving of its win but I didn't like it much.

    I'm not much of a Cumberbatch fan, by and large I don't see anything special about his work, but he is very good here and his nomination was deserved. Turing's oddness and reserve play right into his strengths as a performer. Agree about Keira Knightley as well and how she aces a role that if she had gotten it wrong could have severely damaged the audience's involvement in the film.

    Even with the picture's somewhat chilly remove it's far more involving and accessible than the similar Theory of Everything which I thought was a jumbled mess.

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    1. It was leagues better than The Theory of Everything, no arguments from me on that. For me, Birdman was not only more inventive, but far better. I like, but don't love Cumberbatch as a performer. Thought he was great here, though. Glad we agree on Knightley.

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  2. I see what you mean about them not really seeming affected by the war. I accepted that as it seems everyone involved were very cerebral individuals. They were just ultra focused on solving this problem. I really did love this movie though, Knightley should've won that Oscar over Arquette.

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    1. They were definitely cerebral folks, but WWII was such a pervasive thing I thought it should feel more tangible. And yeah, Knightley was better than Arquette.

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  3. You hit on so much I agree with here, most notably how wonderfully perfect Keira Knightley is in this, completely elevating what is in every way a stock character. I get what you're saying about it feeling cold - to me it was more that the subject deserved a more complicated film than this. It's generic, glossy filmmaking on every level, and this isn't a generic, glossy story in pretty much any meaningful way. It certainly plays very well, and I enjoyed it while watching it, but something felt missing by the time it was over, despite all the "right" elements being in place.

    The one thing I still have a hard time getting over, though, is that they never even make the slightest attempt to explain how the machine works. That feels like sort of a basic thing to include in a film like this, no?

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    1. Thanks! Glad we agree so much. As for the machine, they did at least try to explain what it does, I was okay with that. Anything even slightly more technical would have made an already cold movie even more frigid.

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  4. I watched this recently as well. It's nice to have a reason to remember that I always want to like Keira Knightley even if I don't always. I thought she was great in this, and was one of the pleasant surprises.

    I'd have liked this to stay a little closer to the actual history. Turing's real story had more than enough drama that it didn't need to be sexed up for a movie, but they sexed it up anyway, and that's disappointing (I had the same issues with Zero Dark Thirty). As a quick f'rinstance, Turing evidently wasn't an early candidate for being diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome as he is depicted here.

    This isn't to take away from Benedict Cumberbatch's performance; I think he's great in the role that's written. I just wish it had been written more accurately to what really happened. Alan Turing deserved that at the very least.

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    1. Excellent points. To be fair, though, just about every 'biopic' is "sexed up" for the screen. Glad you liked Knightley.

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  5. Great read Dell, though this movie put me to sleep!! And I wouldn't say it offended me, but I didn't like the way it used his obvious autism as the butt for jokes. Its not like the movie is filled with it but it happened enough for me to notice it.

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    1. Point well taken, though I imagine he would've been the butt of plenty of jokes for that very reason in the 1940s.

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  6. So glad yo read you liked Keira's work. I remember when she was nominated for the big awards people went "but she is doing nothing in the film!". Subtle is not nothing. She was such a heart of the story and really played her character beautifully.

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  7. The whole time I watched this I kept thinking that Cumberbatch was channelling his inner-Sheldon Cooper. Jim Parsons would have made a better Turing, plus he's actually gay so the cringe factor of his treatment would have been all the more manifested.

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    1. Meh...I don't know. I like Parsons, but the vibe he gives off is far too comfortable in his own skin to be bothered by what others think, both on Big Bang and in Home, where he did voice-over duties. It's almost as if he's awkward on purpose. At the very least, he embraces his "differentness." Turing, at least as portrayed here, is more aware that his own awkwardness is causing him problems and is very much on the defensive, and not quite sure where he fits in. Not convinced Parsons could pull that off.

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  8. Stunning review, especially the conclusion. I agree that the film was lacking a human element, well with regards to how the characters felt about the war. Everyone treats it like it's just another day at work.But I found Turing's struggle of self more than made up for this. I think Cumberbatch does an amazing job and if I was at the academy, he would have scored my vote for best actor. What did you think of the film hopping between different timelines, I didn't enjoy that; felt it robbed the movie of an even flow.

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    1. Thought about addressing the hopping back and forth in time, but I'm ultimately unsure how I feel about it. The flow was disrupted by it and it felt superfluous, but I didn't think it was terrible. Thanks.

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  9. There are enough human style stories for me on the war, was quite happy for one with a different tone. Agree with you on casting, and especially on Knightley. Though not entirely acurate as pointed out above, it's an important story and that one highlight's just how much the world owes him. And how much he was let down.

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    1. Can't argue much with what you've written other than to say that tone was a bit of a turnoff for me.

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  10. I'm with you the movie is not completely satisfying. It felt vert slick, without rough edges, tailored to appeal to awards season. Historically important, so it's worth seeing as a history lesson. But it could have been better. My interest was with the enigma machine, I wish they had focused more on that aspect. Did not give me a real sense of how high the stakes were. A pity part of the story was invented for dramatic effect and the filmmakers didn't trust what they had. I would rather watch what really happened. A decent movie but not great.

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    1. "Did not give me a real sense of how high the stakes were." This sentence sums up one of my biggest gripes.

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