By: Elena Donatone
If there is a movie that left an impact on me recently, that is surely The Imitation Game (2014).
The Imitation Game wonderfully tells the true story of British mathematician and university professor Alan Turin and his contribution during World War 2, which led to the end of the conflict.
The historical drama, directed by Morten Tyldum, is based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
Alan Turin, played by the amazingly talented Benedict Cumberbatch, is hired by the government to work for the cryptography team at Bletchley Park, in the south of England.
The mathematician has to work with other great minds on trying to decrypt Enigma, the machine Germans used to send messages about imminent attacks and military actions.
Enigma is hard to decipher and the stakes are high… if the team manages to understand how the machine works, the Allies will have an advantage over Germany and they will be able to end the war sooner.
Commander Denniston: "Enigma isn't difficult, it's impossible. The Americans, the Russians, the French, the Germans, everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable."
Alan Turing: "Good. Let me try and we'll know for sure, won't we?"
But Alan is not an easy person to work with. From his arrogance and incapacity to understand other people to his desire to work by himself on a machine that could solve Enigma, the team can’t tolerate him. Especially when Prime Minister Winston Churchill puts him in charge of the whole operation!
Luckily Joan (Keira Knightley), the only woman of the team, grows fonder of him and gets Alan to soften his edges and become friends with his other colleagues.
"When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean. They say something else and you're expected to just know what they mean."
As they face a race against time and a government who doesn’t trust them to succeed, Alan and the team hit many setbacks before finally deciphering Enigma.
Alan’s success helps the Allies and the war to end quicker, but since the project he participated in was a secret government operation, he can’t talk about it or share documents on it for the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, Turin died at age 41 because of an alleged suicide through self-poisonening.
The Imitation Game is truly inspiring and it reflects on various important themes such as: homosexuality, bullying and the power that comes from being different.
The movie offers a peek into the struggles homosexual men had to face during that time.
Alan Turin, as a gay man, has to hide his real self from everybody, in fear he might lose his job at Bletchley Park. He only confesses his sexuality to Joan, with whom he shares a deep emotional bond.
Unfortunately, as the movie reminds us, it was illegal to be openly homosexual in England and men faced jail time for “indecency” when caught with another man.
Thankfully, that is not the case anymore, but we can’t forget the past and how much we achieved when it comes to LGBTQ rights.
"Now, if you wish you could have been normal... I can promise you I do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren't."
The Imitation Game also shows us how different Alan is from other people and how much he was bullied for it in school when he was younger. Few people can understand him completely and that is partly because of his genius mind and his struggles in connecting to other people. But as many great minds before him, Alan Turin is an outcast.
However Turin is considered to this day one of the greatest and smartest British mathematicians in history and the movie beautifully pays homage to him like never before.
And that is mainly due to Benedict Cumberbatch’s remarkable performance as Alan. The actor lets the audience understand the struggles Turin has to face for being different and his infinite passion for cryptography.
Keira Knightley is also empowering as she takes on the role of the only woman in the operation, showing us how hard it was back then for the submissive sex to succeed in a male-dominated society. Knightley’s performance is award-winning for me and she proved once again how bright she shines in historical dramas.
Although The Imitation Game is loosely based on Turin’s life and work during WW2 and some anecdotes are not accurate, The Imitation Game is a masterpiece that will leave a mark on the viewer.
If you are a fan of history and siding with the outcast, then The Imitation Game is a must-watch for you! And you’ll learn a great deal about the noteworthy man that saved the world from the atrocity and violence of WW2.
"Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine."