The Imitation Game is a 2014 American historical drama thriller film
directed by Morten Tyldum, with a screenplay by Graham Moore loosely
based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges
(previously adapted as the stage play and BBC drama Breaking the Code).
It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as real-life British cryptanalyst Alan
Turing, who decrypted German intelligence codes for the British
government during World War II.
The film's screenplay topped the annual Black List for best unproduced
Hollywood scripts in 2011. The Weinstein Company acquired the film for
$7 million in February 2014, the highest amount ever paid for U.S.
distribution rights at the European Film Market. It was released
theatrically in the United Kingdom on November 14 and the United States
on November 28.
The Imitation Game was a commercial and critical success. It grossed
over $233 million worldwide against a $14 million production budget,
making it the highest-grossing independent film of 2014. It was
nominated in eight categories at the 87th Academy Awards, including Best
Picture, Best Director (Tyldum), Best Actor (Benedict Cumberbatch), and
Best Supporting Actress (Keira Knightley). It won an Academy Award for
Best Adapted Screenplay. It garnered five nominations in the 72nd Golden
Globe Awards and was nominated in three categories at the 21st Screen
Actors Guild Awards, including Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a
Motion Picture. It also received nine British Academy of Film and
Television Arts nominations, including Best Film and Outstanding British
Film, and won the People's Choice Award at the 39th Toronto
International Film Festival.
The film was criticised for its inaccurate portrayal of historical
events and Turing's character and relationships. However, the LGBT civil
rights advocacy and political lobbying organisation the Human Rights
Campaign honoured The Imitation Game for bringing Turing's legacy to a
wider audience.
Plot
In 1951, two policemen, Nock and Staehl,
investigate a break-in at the home of mathematician Alan Turing, whose
suspicious behaviour and absence of war records causes Nock to believe
that Turing may be a Soviet spy. The police send a man to follow Turing
into a pub, where he hands an envelope to a male prostitute, who is
arrested shortly afterward and confesses that Turing is a client. Staehl
is ready to charge Turing with gross indecency, but Nock is still
convinced that Turing is a spy, and begs Staehl to let him interrogate
Turing for half an hour, whereupon the latter begins to disclose his
top-secret activities during the war.
In 1939, after Britain declares war on Germany, Turing is accepted by
Commander Alastair Denniston, of the Royal Navy, for a code-breaking job
at Bletchley Park, working alongside Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross,
Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards. They are instructed to
break the Enigma codes that the Germans use to encrypt their
communications, which, as Maj Gen Stewart Menzies of MI6 explains,
allows them to attack British and American shipping, leading to famine
and the loss of life.
Turing works in isolation from the others, to the disappointment of his
colleagues, and he concentrates all of his efforts in creating a
decryption machine, instead of decoding by hand. When Denniston refuses
to fund the machine's construction, Turing writes to Winston Churchill,
who arranges the funding and names Turing as the team leader. Turing
immediately fires Furman and Richards, who are linguists rather than
mathematicians, and orders the others to construct the machine with him.
There is a flashback to 1927 when Turing was in the boys-only Sherborne
School, where he was bullied by other pupils but was rescued by a boy
named Christopher Morcom. The latter introduces him to recreational
cryptography and arouses Turing's romantic feelings, but dies after the
spring break from bovine tuberculosis, leaving Turing scarred.
Turing's team, which needs more people, places a crossword puzzle in the
newspaper and conducts a mathematical examination for candidates,
eventually selecting Joan Clarke and Jack Good. Clarke is prevented by
her parents from working with an all-male team, so Turing asks her to
become one of the telegraph clerks, who are female, and conveys
cryptographic materials to her living quarters in secret.
The machine is eventually finished, and Turing names it 'Christopher',
but it takes too long to execute, whereas the ciphers of Enigma are
changed on a daily basis. Denniston orders the machine to be destroyed
and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers threaten to quit.
Denniston relents and says he will give the team one month to decode an
encrypted German message with the machine.
During this time, Clarke's parents pressure her to leave Bletchley
because she is unmarried and alone, and they want her home, so Turing
proposes to her so she can stay. At the engagement party, Cairncross
advises Turing he is aware of his homosexuality, but warns him to keep
it from Joan due to the risk of being caught. During an evening at a
local pub, Hugh begins to flirt with a colleague of Joan's named Helen.
As they flirt, Helen jokes how she has a crush on a German but cannot
pursue him, because she suspects he has a girlfriend based on the
messages. Turing asks how she knows, and Helen clarifies that because
the messages start with the same word, she suspects that must be
someone's name. Because of this, Turing realises that the machine can be
sped up by prerecognising routine phrases such as "Heil Hitler," and
the recalibrated machine starts to quickly decode transmissions.
However, the team realises that, should the Royal Navy act on the new
information, the Germans may realise the Enigma code is broken and
redesign it, thereby voiding the team's work.
As such, the team conceals the success of the machine from Denniston and
delivers the results to Menzies, who uses his influence to prevent the
team from being fired. Menzies works with the team to determine which
pieces of information can be used while arousing the least German
suspicion. Around this time, Turing discovers that Cairncross is a
Soviet spy, but Cairncross argues that the Soviets are allied with the
UK and threatens to expose Turing's homosexuality if he tells anyone.
Turing finds Menzies in Clarke's home, suspecting her of being a spy.
When Turing reveals that the spy is Cairncross, Menzies explains that he
already knew and has been using Cairncross to leak information of low
importance.
Shortly afterwards, fearing that Clarke is in trouble because of her
secret involvement with the team, Turing reveals to her that he is a
homosexual, hoping to drive her away. She is unfazed by this, and Turing
lies that he has never cared for her. They break up, but she refuses to
leave.
As the war ends, Menzies tells the team to destroy all of their work and
never speak of their achievements to the world.
In 1951, back in the interrogation room, Nock is stunned by the story
and says that he cannot judge Turing. However, Staehl has the charges
pressed, and Turing is given a choice of two years in prison or chemical
castration; Turing chooses the latter. He is visited at home by Clarke,
who witnesses his physical and mental deterioration. She comforts him
by saying that his work saved millions of lives.
In the end, the team is shown in 1945 burning all of their documents,
and a caption reveals that Turing committed suicide in 1954, aged 41.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Imitation_Game
