The Imitation Game (UK Rating: 12A)
It’s Benedict Cumberbatch Week! First, TV’s Sherlock announces his engagement and now he arrives on the big screen in the much-anticipated The Imitation Game, about the breaking of the Enigma Code in World War II. The Imitation Game is released around the UK on Friday, 14th November, but Lights, Camera, Action! wonders whether or not the film computes.
Just four weeks after opening The London Film Festival, The Imitation Game goes on general release around the UK on Friday and arrives with something of a reputation, especially where its leading man is concerned. Benedict Cumberbatch has already won plaudits for his performance as maths genius Alan Turing, including a BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) nomination for Best Actor that intriguingly sets up a head-to-head with Timothy Spall as Mr. Turner. The winner is announced on 7th December so there’s more than enough time to compare the two.
However, it’s a film that seems to have bigger ambitions than the BIFAs. After all, a certain Harvey Weinstein has put both money and the weight of his publicity machine behind it, which immediately begs the question as to whether he’s found this year’s Philomena and whether it will score come Oscar time.
The story of Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) is told in a series of flashbacks, prompted by a police investigation into a break-in at his house. It was these enquiries that ultimately exposed his homosexuality – illegal at the time – and culminated in his suicide in 1954. Most of the film is set during World War II when he was looking after the team charged with cracking the Germans’ hitherto impenetrable Enigma Code, but also interwoven are scenes from his schooldays and later life in the 1950s. He wasn’t just the mathematical genius who saved hundreds of thousands of lives by breaking the code, he’s now also regarded as the father of modern computing, yet his full story only emerged in the late 80s and he eventually received a Royal pardon last year.
It’s certainly a film with an emotional pull, albeit a different one from Philomena, and it’s one that Cumberbatch, in particular, has been very vocal about. The injustice done to Turing because of the laws at the time, the tragedy of his suicide, the fact that his genius has only been recognised in recent yearsthey all make for a moving film, and one that brings a lump to the throat at the end. Cumberbatch’s performance certainly plays a pivotal role in that.
His interpretation is surprisingly physical, with the Turing given a slightly lop-sided walk, a posture that, alongside his difficulty in communicating and empathising with other people, marks him out as a misfit. Cumberbatch also gives a beautifully intricate performance, multi-layered and moving, and it’s his best movie acting to date.
So good is it that it proves to be the film’s dominant force, instead of being an integral part of it. Very simply, that’s because the movie isn’t on the same level as its star. There are some really clumsy moments – the clich of a young newspaper vendor shouting out the latest war headlines while evacuees queue up at the railway station, for instance. It over-labours its messages to the extent that some lines seem to have been written in capital letters and double underlined. The detective story in the early scenes is also an uncomfortable fit with the rest of the film’s rather conventional narrative.
