The Imitation Game (2014)'s comments

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Tiago Costa

The Imitation Game plays like the polite dinner conversation at a party, before drinks have been served to loosen everybody up. It's so mannered and inoffensive that it seems to come at us from the chamber of a prettily-furnished snow globe.

It's a biopic that chronicles three interwoven periods in the life of mathematician Alan Turing, a solitary introvert who developed a machine that deciphered codes the Nazis used to deliver tactical messages during WW2. A latent homosexual, the film explores Turing's difficult and ultimately failed efforts to reconcile his nature with societal pressures to lead a conventional life.

Taken from a screenplay by Graham Moore, which topped the 2011 Black List, The Imitation Game does not measure up to the profundity of its material. In an attempt to cater to everyone, the film reaches for no-one in particular. If it was a woman she'd be in a full-length gown buttoned up to the neck, sipping tea in a pavilion somewhere, talking very drearily about something pretty interesting. Substituting for depth and the gritty truth are eloquent turns of phrase and a nostalgic ambience.

Moore's buttery screenplay is self-impressed and prone to occasional hysteria. The line, 'Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine,' is apparently so beautiful it's repeated in all three interwoven stories. A scene where Cumberbatch awkwardly proposes to Knightley is cutesy and insincere. The actors might as well be holding up a sign that says ISN'T THIS DELIGHTFUL! There are also some incredibly sloppy cues in the narrative; in one scene Cumberbatch discovers the identity of a Soviet spy by finding the Bible sitting on a colleague's desk - conveniently earmarked with the exact passage he knows was used to encrypt the message for the Soviets.

Despite all this, Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley give appealing performances - but it's Alex Lawther as the young Alan Turing who steals the show with one heartbreakingly honest closeup near the end. The Imitation Game is pleasant enough as a piece of literate artifice. The problem with the movie is that it has dishonoured its subject matter by distorting it with an Oscar-grade glossiness that the film's themes and performances resist but fail to overcome. I came out of the cinema curious about the real Turing, and disappointed that his story had been pilloried in this way. There's an interesting movie here somewhere, underneath all the tinsel.

9 years 3 months ago

frankqb

A masterful performance in a story long overdue for telling. Ultimately, it feels a lot like just another in a long line of annual British WWII dramas that will be nominated for an Oscar. Very good, but not amazing. Feels like its message is too little too late.

Three stars out of four.

9 years 3 months ago

jmars

One part history, three parts schmaltz and seven parts awards bait. Makes me wish I had seen a movie about the actual story.

9 years ago

Jordan95

The Imitation Game is another biopic in a seemingly endless list of biopics that come out every year indistinguishable from one another. For all its self-important attitude and melodrama, it doesn't even attempt to shine above other similarly themed films; it actually revels in following convention to a T. Morten Tydlum, of whom I've only watched his acclaimed feature "Headhunters", which I quite liked, here follows the British Biopic Manual at every second, including but not limited to:

* Heart-stirring but otherwise functional soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat.
* Casting great British actors and giving them stereotypical roles.
* Casting Benedict Cumberbatch in another misunderstood and antisocial genius.
* Making up many unnecesary plot points.
* Hundreds of historical inaccuracies.

And so on, and so forth. Cumberbatch gives a good performance, but one that feels too manufactured and rehearsed. I still can't understand how Cumberbatch and Bradley Cooper were nominated over Jake Gylenhall's masterful performance in "Nightcrawler", but that's for another review. Speaking of undeserved Oscar nominations, even more baffling was the nomination for Tydlum's serviceable but entirely forgettable directing over David Fincher, Dan Gilroy, Christopher Nolan, etc. I guess the Oscar voters will have a heart attack if they even think of nominating someone who doesn't direct a polished British drama.

Now, to my biggest gripe with the film, the historical inaccuracies. Of course every biopic has them, it's practically inevitable when doing a film you can't include every fact and person or otherwise it would be endless. But the matter is that other biopics haven't suffered in quality because of this; Spike Lee's Malcolm X is a monumental example of this and that film even now remains underseen and underrated, and was even practically ignored at the Oscars. The Imitation Game suffers because it's noticeable when something was drastically altered from history just to make it more digerible for a mainstream audience. Although I found it a little better on first viewing, my opinion on the film lowered when I read about the inaccuracies, such as Turing's personality, greatly altered to make him much more socially isolated than he actually was. Maybe the filmmakers thought he wouldn't be relatable or sympathetic otherwise, but given his eventual tragic treatment by the British government, I think they were rather mistaken.

Despite all these flaws, the film remains an entertaining affair throughout; it's just that it never elevates itself from nothing else than an affable but completely forgettable film. At least it's a little better than "The Theory of Everything".

9 years ago

poderyempresas

"TODAY, WE CALL THEM COMPUTERS."

9 years 2 months ago

Paravail

Utterly derivative, by the numbers Oscar bait. "Based on a true story," check. Set in England during World War II, check. Main character's actions are somehow instrumental in defeating the Nazis, check. Main character is played by a handsome actor and has a crippling flaw that does not detract from his physical attractiveness, check. Superfluous female love interest who is presented as feminist but sacrifices everything for sake of male lead, check. This isn't a biopic of Alan Turing: it is a tired, cinematic formula into which characters like Turing or King George VI can be inserted as interchangeable parts. I am getting very tired of this formula because it doesn't do justice to the real people it portrays and it's so stiff and unchangeable that there are no surprises. You know everything that's going to happen long before it does, so there's no stakes. There's no drama. There's no real reason to watch it at all, and how this formula became the gold standard for serious, adult-oriented cinema is beyond me.

7 years 4 months ago

TheOnlyRogueAngel

An American take on the 'English stiff upper lip' perspective of an amazing and interesting story, that unfortunately wasn't told. Historically incorrect, and as has been mentioned in previous comments, many important factual details glossed over for the sake of Hollywood. While this film won numerous awards, they were only the vacuous fluffy headed ones that pander to the ego's of the directors and producers. Cumberbatch's portrayal of Alan Turing was brilliant and deserving of merit, despite it bordering on the autistic.

Unlike previous comments, there was no gay rights being shoved down the audience's throats. Mention of Alan's homosexuality was part of the story, not a deliberate attempt by the film's makers to make a statement.

Altogether, despite the lack of real historical content, it wasn't a bad film.

8 years 3 months ago

Skira

Benedict Cumberbatch fit the role all too well. Wow.

9 years 3 months ago

Boei

It's good, but not as great as I expected. It's a bit to nice like Tiago Costa says.

Of course it's a sad story but it could have been even more impactful and a bit less cliché... Cumberbatch is great though!

8 years 7 months ago

Earring72

Well made and extremely well acted war drama, especially by the young actors, althought the contribution of the Polish are overlooked. Nice WWII drama does feel a bit like a BBC tvmovie, but a very good one.

6 years 9 months ago

ChrisReynolds

Successful Oscar bait about gay rainman beating the Nazis. Some good performances (Cumberbatch was too mannered and full of tics for my liking, but Lawther was a revelation and Strong does good work as always), but bland direction and an awful script that crudely establishes characters and motivations and spells things out through clunky dialogue. Not only does the script have no respect for the audience, it goes out of its way to insult the war heroes of Bletchley Park spoiler

Turing is also the Hollywood version of a gay man where he's not allowed to do anything gay onscreen

7 years 5 months ago

AeroRafa

As an engineer, I loved it. I've been in some conferences about cryptography and heard about Enigma long ago. It's funny from my perspective how this mathematicians depreciate military intelligence, by not revealing how to break Enigma, just in case they use it in not-the-best way.

As a film lover, I just can't hate a film with Keira Knightley in it. Good acting, but I missed a deeper characterisation.

4/5

9 years 1 month ago

danisanna

Loved it!

4 years 1 month ago

amstel

1 hour and 54 minutes of film without a single original idea. However, it does feature some decent acting both by Cumberbatch and Alex Lawther (young Turing).

8 years 2 months ago

Siskoid

The Imitation Game tells the story of Alan Turing, inventor of the computer, his role in winning the war for the Allies by breaking the German Enigma machine's cypher, and his struggles with Asperger's and being gay in that era. Benedict Cumberbatch somehow avoids being Sherlock, and the script is surprisingly funny, especially in the first act. Unlike The Theory of Everything, another science-related Oscar-baiting movie to come out this month, there was actually quite a lot of maths in it, and it's the better for it. Telling the story in three time frames creates a more complete picture and adds a tragic element. It loses me a little bit at the end, however, getting a bit cheesy when it hammers its point home two times too many, through Kiera Knightley's last scene and the over-obvious "what happened later" cards. Oh, and historical purists/pedants beware, there's a chapter missing from this for simplicity's sake.

8 years 10 months ago