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Turing down for what – The Imitation Game

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For the makers of The Imitation Game, cracking the code of the irascible Alan Turing is a far easier task than solving the larger problem of biopics. Though the genius mathematician and code-breaker led a clandestine and closeted existence, actor Benedict Cumberbatch brings him to life, wholly, in this focused – and very thrilling – retelling of Turing’s instrumental role during World War 2. Director Morten Tyldum (of the obnoxious Headhunters) and screenwriter Graham Moore craft a compelling caper around some sterling performances, and they honour Turing without succumbing to a blind canonisation. However, not even their good intentions, nor Benedict Cumberbatch in his meatiest big screen role to date, can make this biopic feel quite as bold or as significant as its subject. Still, my complaints are minor. Despite viewers likely knowing where the picture is headed – particularly those savvy ones aware of who actually won WW2 – The Imitation Game is captivating to watch.

It deserves restating: Cumberbatch delivers excellent work as Turing, who, in his efforts to unravel the Nazis’ supposedly unbreakable Enigma code, conjures up the earliest computer at the Government’s top secret site at Bletchley Park. He makes few friends in the process; not his colleague, chess champion Hugh Alexander (the scoundrel Matthew Goode) and certainly not his stiff-upper-lip superior Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance). Turing does, however, earn the support of surprising savant Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and MI6 Agent Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong, stealing the show with some David Niven swagger), and together they become involved in one of history’s most infamous espionage operations, the results of which were only recently declassified. (Spoiler alert: Err, they pulled it off.)

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game has all the hallmarks of a heist movie, with a ragtag team working together on a seemingly impossible mission. It’s also a fascinating portrait of a complicated, frequently unlikable individual. Yet, because of the genre’s limitations, it doesn’t fully illustrate the man, forced instead to indulge in the biopic genre’s hoariest clichés. We still flash back to Turing’s troubled childhood as easy shorthand to explain a lifetime of emotional issues; characters still echo the same inspirational aphorism across the decades; personality traits that mass audiences might object to are gently scrubbed away until they resemble something less threatening.

Case in point: Turing’s homosexuality, depicted as entirely sexless. It not only betrays the man, but the feature’s purported moral: that a person, like a computer, is made up of so many cogs and processes and individual, identifying traits, to remove one would render it unworkable. When Turing is offered the opportunity for a lifetime of chaste companionship with a woman, he turns her down because he doesn’t want to deny those human urges. They too are as essential as his prodigious mind. But we never see those urges manifested. By portraying Turing as sexless, that moral is neutered.

Undeniably, there’s a big puzzle piece missing here. Nonetheless, this is a fine flick; well-made and judiciously performed. Tyldum’s problem-solving sequences are especially compelling; a testament to the admirable filmmaking on display (particularly in the execution of the big ‘a-ha’ moment). The Imitation Game is a great biopic. The trouble is, biopics just ain’t that great.

The Imitation Game arrives in Australian cinemas January 1, 2015.

4/5

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