Imitation Game – ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ DVD Review

First, pneumonia sucks.  I went from two months of daily reviews and posts, to taking more than three weeks off, as I had a nice case of walking pneumonia that started Easter weekend, and while I have recovered, I just haven’t had the spark or energy that I needed to get my fingers typing up some reviews.  But, I’ll force myself and try to power through this one, even though it has been almost a month since I saw the film.

The Imitation Game tells the real life story of Alan Turing, the lead of the team that cracked the Nazi “Enigma Machine”, that scrambled and ciphered German communications in WWII.  Turing was a mathematical genius who was brought to Bletchley Park with other experts to break the code, but at first their methods conflicted.  The others on the team were working the cypher the old fashioned way, with pencil and paper, but their calculations that were not fast enough given that the machine’s settings were changed every day.  Turing proposed building a computing machine to do the work for them, and once they realized that there were certain constants in the German communications; such as the daily weather report followed by a “heil Hitler”; the machine did it’s job, but set forth a new batch of problems.  If the Allies started intercepting and thwarting every coded attack the Germans planned, they would know their Enigma Machine was compromised and would encode their messages another way.  They had to find a way to stop just enough attacks and sacrifice just enough lives.  Again they turned to Turing, who used statistical analysis to help decide which attacks would be stopped and which would be allowed to proceed.  Hardly easy decisions, but by doing so, they did shorten the length of the war considerably.  A war that would have gone on unforeseeably longer if the Germans discovered their code had been cracked.

That’s not the only thing about Turing though, The Imitation Game picks up just before the end of his life, just before he killed himself after being forced to take behaviour altering “treatments” after being arrested for being a homosexual.  The father of modern computing was gay at a time when it was illegal in England.  Though he hid it well and for a long time, he was found out, and was given a choice, medical treatment or prison.  After choosing the “treatment” alternative, Turing eventually killed himself.

First, I didn’t really know much about Alan Turing, I had heard of his test to prove or disprove artificial intelligence, that is to ask a series of questions to determine whether the person on the other end of the conversation is a real person or a computer programmed to act and respond like a real person.  I had heard some things about his work during WWII, and his work on breaking the Enigma Machine, but I don’t think I knew the details about his life, or the ending of it, until I saw the film.  I did hear through the news that he was gay only after he was given a posthumous royal pardon.  As for the rest of the story, I have to accept what the film has told me.  I assume it to be fairly accurate, but I’m also certain liberties have been taken in the name of entertainment.

The film was quite entertaining, and quite informative.  I am always in awe of films “based on true events” when they still manage to build in suspense.  I know who won WWII, I know the code was cracked, but I was still; quite often; on the edge of my seat as I watched this film.  For that, I have to applaud the director, and of course the lead, Benedict Cumberbatch who you must believe is at the top of his craft right now.  Every role he has taken he has poured himself into and (in my opinion) done an incredible job.  (This makes me even more anxious to see him as Marvel’s Doctor Strange next year, as Strange is my favourite comic book character!)  Keira Knightley was excellent as well as Joan Clarke, the only female member of Turing’s team.  My only complaint about the film was that I personally wanted to learn more about the machine and the way that they cracked Enigma.  I suppose that could have pushed the film more towards documentary and less biography, but I think a few lines of dialogue could have been spared to have Turing explain to one of the members of the team how their machine functioned.  Still, all in all, it was highly enjoyable.

Bottom Line:  Could the way the “Christopher” machine functioned still be classified or top secret?  Could that be why they didn’t give me that bit of exposition?