All, right, ya got me. Benedict Cumberbatch still has the silliest name in movies (I see you, Gugu Mbatha-Raw), but there isn’t a single person I’d rather see play a spectrum dweller. Nobody brings the Asperger’s quite like “Sherlock” here.
Enigma was the tool the Nazis used to encode messages in WWII and all of the allies tried to break it. Assuming the sources are correct, an English mathematician named Alan Turing (Cumberbatch) led a team that did break it several painful years after the war started. I immediately sympathized with the self-confident, candid and humorless Turing as he seemed the exact embodiment of a phrase I read frequently on my report cards, “doesn’t play well with others.” Of course, Turing’s abrasiveness often came from peerlessness, while I’m just a jerk.
Alan Turing, however, continued his aggressive solo act even when presented with gifted co-workers. He insisted that manually breaking Enigma was folly; his goal was to build a machine that took all the guess-work away. There’s great interplay between Turing and immediate boss, Commander Denniston (Charles Dance) — who isn’t a fan– his MI6 section leader Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong) –who is a fan– and all of the folks forced to work with him, their collective opinion on Turing changing from scene-to-scene. If you can a imagine a robot deliberately telling a joke in an attempt to endear itself, you can imagine how a story about Nazi code breaking might have levity.
The Imitation Game is an allusion to a theoretical gambit used to to determine if an unknown subject is a computer or not; in 
retrospect, this is a perfect title for the film — not only does it hint at highbrow hijinks, it’s a wonderful classification of Turing himself, who often comes across as more cumputer-like than human-like — I’ve seen Cumberbatch do variations of this role several times before, but he’s never been better than here, probably because director Morten Tyldum demanded he be both at the same time.
There are three timelines in the film — the main set during WWII, while another in 1951 where Turing’s homosexuality is investigated by police and another in 1928 when his homosexuality is discovered and embraced while at school. (Worth note that homosexual activity was illegal in Great Britain until the 1970s, and was punished by chemical castration —AAAAAHHH!!!) The multiple timelines are extrememly useful as breaking Enigma in the second act would be substantially anticlimatic otherwise.
You realize, of course, that this “biography” could be a complete and utter fabrication, right? There’s no spoiler in saying that the real Turing died decades before the secrets on Enigma breaking were released, and that MI6 ordered the destruction of all documentation immediately following WWII … all we really know is — Turing was indeed brilliant, MI6 claimed to have broken Enigma and the Allies won the war, still at very heavy cost. Personally, I bet the English weren’t the ones to break Enigma — I’d be darn surprised if the country that was first to nuclear arms (U.S.) or the one that produced all of the post-war world chess champions (U.S.S.R.) didn’t both break it in their own timelines. What we do know is the English were the first to boast about it. It’s a good boast.
The key to the battles of force
Was breaking Nazi comminiques at the source
Great pressure apllied
By genius bona-fide
So much easier if the Germans used Morse
Rated PG-13, 114 Minutes
D: Morten Tyldum
W: Graham Moore
Genre: Nerds hate Nazis, too
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Puzzle lovers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Nazis
