The Imitation Game (2014)
The strengths of the movie are three:
the compelling story, based on Alan Turing’s remarkable life
Benedict Cumberbatch, whose performances I don't always care for, but who inhabits the character he has been given quite perfectly (though that character diverges rather distressingly from the real Turing)
Keira Knightley who plays Joan Clarke very well, plus an all-around great cast
A 7- minute video: “The Heroes of Bletchley Park” with well-selected scenes from the movie and intelligent commentary by the cast and by employees of the current Bletchley Park museum.
Clip 1: Alan proposes to Joan. [Note: Alan is gay.]
An expanded version of the 7-minute video (14 minutes), entitled “The Making of the Imitation Game”, with more from the production team.
Another good video (13 minutes), focusing on Turing, “Alan Turing: Man and Enigma”.
An hour-long BBC special on Gordon Welchman / Bletchley Park .
Alan: “I need you to leave Bletchley.... It's not safe here.... I'm a homosexual....”
Joan: “I'm not going anywhere.... This is the most important work I will ever do -- and no one is going to stop me....”
Better-than-average (2-minute) trailer .
A nice still from the movie.
This is a fact-checking website [spoiler alert], which discusses discrepancies between the movie and reality, some of which are fairly significant. If you are planning to see the movie, I suggest that you view the preceding link only after you have seen it.
A fact I uncovered which is not on that website is the important role of Gordon Welchman, the mathematician in charge of Hut 6 (German army and air force cryptanalysis). (Turing's Hut 8 was responsible for German naval cryptanalysis, but since all of the German armed forces used the Enigma machines, there was obviously considerable overlap.) The movie (at 50 minutes) shows Matthew Goode (Hugh Alexander) from Alan's team suggesting the idea of a “diagonal board”, which speeded up calculations by 500 times. It was, in fact, Gordon Welchman who had this critically important idea.
On my original list I said it was criminal that Sophie's Choice had been omitted from the AFI 100 Best Movies list. (As noted under the Sophie's Choice entry, that was “semi-rectified” in the 2008 edition.) My new complaint is that The Imitation Game didn't win all of the following Academy Awards in 2015: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Picture. (Sorry: Eddie, Patricia, and Birdman.) I have seen all 7 of the other movies nominated for Best Picture in 2015; none of them begins to compare with The Imitation Game....
I liked The Imitation Game when I originally saw it in 2015 and it inspired me to read Hodges' book about Turing . The book and the movie are both very good – but in different ways....
From Michael Phillips' review (of the movie): “The movie is entertaining and, at the same time, extremely nervous about going over the heads of the average moviegoer, to the point of boiling down its code-breaking technicalities to watery generalities.”
The book (Alan Turing: The Enigma), certainly can’t be accused of watering anything down.... There are two long chapters on mathematical theory – very heavy on math and philosophy (think Bertrand Russell’s Principles of Mathematics). The title of Turing’s first important paper was “Computable Numbers”. (All of which goes well over my head....) And another chapter on the details of Turing’s decryption machine, which is a bit more accessible, but not really attempted in the movie. The last 2/3 of the book is less philosophy/mathematics, with much interesting computer stuff....
