Cyphers and mathematics have never before been so emotionally triumphant than in the Imitation Game. Set during the Second World War, this film is not your average biopic. Told in a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, The Imitation Game tells the story of the genius mathematician Alan Turing and his mental pursuit to decipher the German Enigma codes.
While other World War II films show the deep and enduring struggle of soldiers that physically fought against hatred, The Imitation Game tells the other side of that historical coin. Instead of fighting it out on the battlefields of Normandy or Stalingrad, five mathematicians try to defeat the Third Reich with wit and smarts. Nestled behind the iron gates of Bletchley Park a military operating camp in the South of England, Turing and his intellectual counterparts Joan Clarke, Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross and Peter Hilton fight their own private intellectual and emotional war. From day to day these geniuses are put up to the task to solve an impossible code that would take nearly twenty million years to complete, in approximately eighteen hours.
Turing himself is portrayed as an isolated narcissist that is as much as an enigma as the Nazi code he is trying to solve. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Turing almost too well, we see him collapse and become broken inside as he is seen as a robotic monster. However, in a layered and poignant screenplay from beginning screenwriter Graham Moore, The Imitation Game does not keep the action of the story at surface level but dives deeper into the emotional struggle of its protagonist, Alan Turing. As Turing loses himself to his work, his past and personal life illuminates the screen. The audience finds out about Turing’s homosexuality and later sees him persecuted for his actions.
With its beautifully conducted score by Alexandre Desplat and vintage style images The Imitation Game transports its audience into the past of World War II but also to witness another side of a revolutionary event. While the outside world of WWII is shown as earth shattering and apocalyptic the quiet and composed arena of Bletchley Park shows a different war to be won.
Solving Enigma is the goal in this film but it is not the resolution. The audience realizes that even after Turing and his peers decipher Enigma they are still forced with the challenge on how to stop oncoming German attacks without drawing attention to their discovery. In a way this group of well-dressed and clever mathematicians are given the opportunity to play God; deciding what cities are destroyed and which are saved, who lives and who dies. Ultimately their efforts assisted the military in a clandestine fight to halt the war two years earlier than predicted, saving millions of lives.
The story is one of bravery and acceptance and overcoming the odds to produce remarkable and life changing results. The film gives heart to an otherwise non-feeling and technical field as viewers witness that the greatest of heroes were found in the most unlikely of places, snuggled in a tiny village in the South of England.
The Imitation Game hits theaters Nov. 28th
Courtesy of Washington Square News
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