After watching and finishing the series Sherlock, I have been on a Benedict Cumberbatch craze. I think that he is truly an amazing actor, and wish to watch more of his works. One of these works that I had the pleasure of watching was The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum. This film has been on my watch list for such a long time that I actually felt a relief while watching. Now, I had already expected for this movie to be good, but I had ever anticipated it to be emotional as well. I was in full on tears near the end of the movie, and my curiosity on the true story of Alan Turing grew. Afterward, I spent about an hour researching the tragic fate of the main character.
The Imitation Game follows the story of a young man named Alan Turing, living in the time of World War II. Working for the British Intelligence agency M16, Turing and his colleagues must break the unbreakable Nazi codes of Enigma. Alan Turing is a secret homosexual, who has a very abrupt and outspoken personality. He believes that he will not only be the one to break the code but create a machine to break every code on-forth. So while his colleagues work together to break down the coding, Turing spends his time building a machine he calls Christopher. After a long 2 years of trial and error, Alan´s machine finally works. Sharing his praise with his co-workers, they realize that all their work cannot be put into action, as if they were to unbreak every Nazi code, Germany will find out and reprogram their coding. So Turing and his co-workers must make the hard decision of what codes should be ¨broken¨. While all this was happening; Turing got engaged to his co-worker Joan, he almost got fired on several occasions, and one of his workers turned out to be a Russian spy. At the end of the movie, World War II has ended, and all files of the breaking of Enigma has been burnt in fear of a new war arising. This resulted in a 50-year government secret of Alan Turing and his works.
The sad and emotional part of this story comes from Alan Turing being discovered to be gay and going to court with the charge of Indecency. At this court, Turing is told he could either go to jail for 2 years or he can go to therapy and take hormonal medicine. Not wanting anyone to get rid of his machine, Christopher, Turing chooses to take the medicine. With taking this medicine Alan begins to lose both his mental and physical functioning, resulting in him taking his own life.
The Imitation Game is truly a brilliant movie, both objectively and subjectively. There wasn't a scene that seemed pointless or dragged on, and the Mise-en-scene elements within truly brought the story to life. The whole movie had this darkness underneath, with the darker colored costumes and the gloomy skies, it really showed what it was like to be Alan Turing. What really got me is that in the flashback scenes, since they were all brightly colored. Typically it is the other way around, where the present is colored and the past is dark. But I think the director wanted to show how he got into this gloomy lifestyle and what past actions made him the way he was. Along with the fact of lighting keys and color values, the dominant feature and character placement of Turing at the beginning of the film showed the audience that he believed he was the most important person when it came to breaking the Enigma. But as he grew and created a closer bond with his co-workers, he no longer was the dominant feature in most scenes. I thought that this was such a well thought out and subtle way to show how much Alan has changed throughout the film.
The Imitation Game was such an amazing film, and now stands a spot in my top 10 favorite movies. It was very attention-grabbing and tension-packed, it even claimed my dad's attention away from his phone (which is saying a lot). This movie was very interesting and eye-opening to the underlying factors of winning World War II. After watching, I became very curious about why he was never in history books or shows while he played such a MAJOR role in the Allies winning WWII. This movie was extremely well written, and I encourage everyone to watch it and learn more about the brilliant Alan Turing.
More Recommendations:
The Theory of Everything
Darkest Hour
Atonement
12 Years a Slave
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