THE IMITATION GAME tells the incredible true story of Alan Turing. And it is truly incredible. Leader of the team that cracked the Germans' impenetrable Enigma Code during World War 2, making possible countless Allied operations that would otherwise have been highly unlikely to succeed and ultimately emerging as a key figure in the war coming to an end with our side victorious, there's an argument to be made that he's perhaps the greatest single hero of the whole of World War 2. And yet not only are his monumental achievements largely unrecognised by history, but until his royal pardon last year, some 60 years after he died in shame and disgrace, he was a criminal, thanks to his homosexuality. It's a heartbreaking tale, and this film immediately gets points for telling his story. It also helps a lot that it is told incredibly well.
Director Morten Tyldum effectively straddles the line between crafting a taut thriller and giving us a worthwhile biopic. While perhaps we skirt on the details in places on the latter point, the film succeeds very well on the former. And yet the tension rarely feels contrived or artificial, or reliant on shifting to war-zones and fights to the death. Much of the atmosphere is generated in one stuffy office, or through the shunk-shunk-shunk of Turing's Universal Machine whirring its gears. There are strong performances all round, with Keira Knightley and Matthew Goode on fine form, Charles Dance enjoyably nasty and Mark Strong bringing a subtle brand of charming menace to proceedings. But the film's biggest ace has to be in the casting of Alan Turing himself.
When you imagine Benedict Cumberbatch playing a flawed, anti-social genius, those of us who have watched SHERLOCK likely concluded that we had a pretty good idea of how he'd play the part. He's put such an indelible stamp on Sherlock Holmes that I think we now read that into his other roles, take a look at Turing on the surface and think, "Oh, that's not much of a stretch." But in truth, past the surface details of glacial demeanor and difficulty in dealing with people, this is a vastly different performance. Cumberbatch presents Turing as a man who in many ways was as much an enigma as the code he was striving to crack, but a man twisted up by his secrets, palpably projecting pain. At the points when his heartbreak creeps up to the surface, it's hard not to get emotional. It's a powerhouse performance, and though the apparently showier roles from the likes of Michael Keaton and Eddie Redmayne seem to be getting more Best Actor buzz at the moment, for me at least, it's Cumberbatch who has just laid down the gauntlet in that particular Oscar chase, and his performance is the one to beat.
I was at least glad that the "Turing test" was sort of mentioned in passing.
