This is going to be a relatively straightforward review. A serious, academic, movie-lover’s take on a film that’s already been nominated for a ton of awards. As a serious person who takes writing movie reviews very seriously, I cannot allow anything to compromise the very serious seriousness of this review. So, to get it out of the way, here are some funny alternate names for Benedict Cumberbatch: Britishguy Sillyname, Beetlejuice Captaincrunch, Butterscotch Cabbagepatch, Bandersnatch Cummerbund, Bandicoot Snootchibootchies, Bippitybop Compadoodle, and Bumpersticker Cowboybebop. Or, as my father puts it, simply “Cuthbert.” One word, like Cher.
Okay, now let’s get to it.
The Imitation Game is a rather straightforward biopic of Alan Turing, the “father of computers”, and focuses the time he spent during World War 2 breaking the Enigma codes used by the Germans. The film also shows some of his early life as an outcast teenager, and his post-war prosecution for “gross indecency” for his homosexuality.
The movie suffers from a bit of “biopic-itus”, in that it sometimes has trouble choosing a focus or an overarching theme on which to focus the story. It gives an interesting and multi-faceted image of the man Alan Turing was, and does so in an engaging way, but the nature of the story makes you wish that the film had chosen a more firm direction to go in. Simply put, Alan Turing’s story has so much meaning in a modern context- the impact of his work on shaping the modern world, and the tragedy of his later life from a gay rights perspective- that it feels like the story could have made a much bigger impact by weaving the context into the storyline, rather than presenting it in a series of titlecards at the end.
Causing much of the above mentioned lack of focus is the slightly strange structure of the story. The film cuts between three different timelines: Turing as a young man, during the war, and towards the end of his life. About halfway through the film, I started to get the impression that this wasn’t the original structure of the screenplay, since a few key, thematically important scenes, especially the explanation of the titular “Imitation Game”, come into the story at really odd times. I have nothing against non-linear storytelling, but the arrangement of the story made it hard to grasp which ideas the film was trying to explore at times.
What the movie does accomplish, as any good bio-pic does, is a fascinating insight into the character it’s centered around. Benedict Cumberbatch is always best when he’s playing characters who teeter on the edge of unlikable, and he does exactly that here. As a viewer, you’re intrigued by Turing, and you empathize with him, but man, if you don’t just dislike him sometimes. It’s a good choice all around, simply because Turing is such an important historical figure, that they managed to portray him as a real, kind of annoying, but ultimately brilliant man.
There was some controversy, both before and after the film’s release, on how the movie was going to handle showing Turing’s homosexuality. Having now seen the film, I can’t say that they glossed over his sexuality, but I will say I didn’t quite like the way it was handled from a storytelling perspective. As I mentioned above, the film presents it’s themes in a slightly garbled way, and it seems like filmmakers were a bit confused in how to incorporate his sexuality into the story they were trying to tell. It’s included a bit, in that Turing’s familiarity with secrets and his position as an outcast as vital parts to the overall narrative, but it seems like it could have been incorporated better. Not more, just differently than the way it was.
The Imitation Game is a strong and accurate biopic of an interesting historical figure, but does stumble a bit when it comes to being a strong story. The elements of the themes the film wants to explore are present, but become muddied by the structure of the story, and the narrative’s difficultly with centering the story around any one particular thread. It’s certainly worth watching for the performances and the insight into a story that, until very recently, was never told, but it isn’t one of the strongest films in its genre.
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