The Imitation Game (2014)

Classified for decades this is the story of how the British cracked the German codes during the second world war, and more particularly its the story of the man that made that possible, the gifted mathematician Alan Turing. The title The Imitation Game has two fold meaning, first it refers to the process of cracking the Nazi's war-time coding system, and determining how to 'imitate' the process whereby the Germans reset that code each day, and secondly it refers to the efforts undertaken by the homosexual Turing to 'imitate' being a heterosexual so that he would have the freedom to do his work.

Being a movie there's is of necessity a lot of streamlining here, composite characters, oversimplifications and the rest, but the fact that this story wasn't better known, at least here in the states (turns out there are a lot of things named for Turing in the UK) is a shame worthy of being addressed. Not only is Turing's story interesting historically, its also dramatically rather riveting. You really have two things going on in this movie, first there is the sort of 'A Beautiful Mind goes to war' A-story, with Turing overcoming his social awkwardness to work with a team to solve a mathematical problem of immense complexity, but also the B or framing story of how in the early 1950's, with his significant role in the war effort and the fact that his work saved literally millions of lives still classified, Turing was convicted for acts of 'gross indecency' (read: homosexuality) and allowed to be chemically castrated by the same government he arguably saved.

Star Benedict Cumberbatch may have found his Oscar bate as Turing, an obsessive genius with an often abrasive personality battling his own internal demons, and yes its been done before, but it still works, while Keira Knigthly is charming as Turing's good friend and one time fiancée cryptologist Joan Clarke. The rest of the cast is generally good, and while they often play stock-type characters, the old school CO, the sneaky intelligence agent, the ingratiating spy, they serve a purpose. I don't know how many of the little details this movie gets right, but the story at its core is quite compelling. While a closeted homosexual and socially awkward, Turing served a country and a society in which he never quite fit in, did it a tremendous service, and then was cruelly abandoned, suffered in silence, and chose to end his own life.

Turings work with algorithms, computations, and his code breaking 'Turing Machine' providing major foundational ground for later computers, and his thoughts on artificial intelligence my yet be the groundwork of many future innovations. His life and work are a great story and the Imitation Game does a great job of communicating them for a general audience in an accessible and engaging manner, crowed pleasing but smart, using established but effective conventions to shine a wider light on things worth knowing and thinking about. ***1/2