The Imitation Game is based on ‘Alan Turing: The Enigma’, written by Andrew Hodge. The film directed by Morten Tyldum, on one level, tells the real life story of the cryptanalyst Turing and his team of code-breakers at Britain’s top-secret Government Code and Cypher School, during the darkest days of World War II.
Delve deeper and you will find that it bares the soul of an extraordinary man who finds himself in extraordinary situations dejected by the false pretensions of his surroundings, people and society at that point of time- no different from the lives and times of many of such men who live in homophobic countries, like India, even today!
Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch (made most popular as Sherlock Holmes on BBC 1), is a brilliant expert in his field- just like John Nash (who passed away a few weeks ago with his wife in a fatal taxi crash) and is called in to work on cracking the German ‘enigma’, a mean machine whose decoded messages are solely understood by the German submarine commanders, creating absolute havoc and destruction on sea- killing British naval soldiers by the hundreds.
This would mean, Great Britain being bled to death and perhaps the final fall of the one nation who stood in the way of Hitler’s ambitious plans of a conquered and humbled Europe at his beck and call.
It is under these circumstances Cumberbatch is called in to work with a team of most extra-ordinary men and soon finds himself, much against the wishes of the others, not only leading the team but also hiring secretly a very talented young Mathematician Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley)- the only woman to be rubbing shoulders with these men.
Yet when it comes to standing shoulder-to-shoulder under severe circumstances, when the project is almost being scrapped and Turing disgracefully being thrown out, his comrades stand by him, threatening to quit, if he is opted out of the million-pound project, especially commissioned by Churchill.
But like all good plots, The Imitation Game has a sinister turn, there is a ‘planted mole’ within with whom Turin has a confrontation, especially after he gets engaged to Clarke, which was the only way to convince her parents to let her stay on the male-dominated campus and work on an all-male team!
There are secrets, Turin must keep, but cannot and in the course of time has to pay for it with whatever he has in life- his dignity, his work, his dreams and Edward which he must jeep alive. Is Edward merely the christened de-coding ‘enigma’ answer? Or do the wounds run deeper?
Therein lies the brilliance of the film and of Cumberbatch as a fine actor who seems to have graduated much from his most popular role of the Baker Street detective.
With outstanding performances by Cumberbatch and Knightley, The Imitation Game rises above the average, oscillating between hope and despair telling us a tale of complete isolation and human intellect violation of a man who was far beyond his times yet not recognised nor properly appraised for the same.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged a petition signed by more than 30,000 people, and released a statement on September 10, 2009 apologising and describing the treatment of Turing as “appalling”.
The Queen officially pronounced Turing pardoned in August 2014.
Did Turing commit suicide or was it an overdose of his treatment drugs? The Imitation Game tells the tale of what the man created- we as the audience are left to lament the life of what ‘enigma’ he could have been- had he merely been accepted by those whose lives he worked to save!
4/5