The blue-eyed, Benedict Cumberbatch plays Alan Turing, a mathematician geek, who thinks he can stop Hitler, though politics “really aren’t [his] thing…” But if the allies were to break ‘Enigma’ – the name of the coding machine that sends Hitler’s messages to Nazis – it would be a very short war. But how can Turing decipher a German code if he can’t even speak German? Answer: He’s always lived in a sort of emotional code.
When the film opens, England is at war with Germany. But in the business of movies it seems England is at war with well, England, as one wonders if the Oscars have room for two British biopics in one season? God help The Theory of Everything up against The Weinstein Brothers’ The Imitation Game! Weinstein is usually the man to always thank at the Oscar podium when you may have forgotten your list of who’s behind your win. (Think The Kings Speech all the way back to The English Patient.)
The Imitation Game delivers immediate authority and screen presence, let alone its Alexandra Desplat soundtrack, to a fault, since Cumberbatch isn’t as charming as Redmayne, and at times he’s barely likeable. As a matter of fact, it takes us awhile to sink into his stiffness. Deliberate? Sure…as we soon learn that he himself seems more machine (like the one he’s attempting to crack) than human.
And while Cumberbatch possesses that aristocratic ‘Downton Abbey’ arrogance, his character of Alan Turing is anything but that. Turing’s dark history of his days at Sherbourne boarding school slowly unravel his own puzzle to the plot. Apparently his life was always in a code…he was a secret homosexual in a time when it was shameful.
But before Turing can crack the ‘Enigma’ he’ll need to assemble a team to keep behind a different type of closed doors. Matthew Goode plays his right hand man, Hugh, with the very charisma that Turing lacks, while ‘Downton’s’ Allen Leech plays John, and then there’s Keira Knightley rounding out the boys as Joan Clarke, a woman who solved a puzzle in six minutes when it should have taken eight. As for Turing and Clarke together (Cumberbatch and Knightley) give solid performances, but sadly despite this being a film about science, there’s little chemistry.
The code-cracking group soon learn that cracking the Enigma is the least of their worries. The bigger secret is keeping their secret a secret….
But the biggest kept secret is one critics might want to keep from Harvey Weinstein…that despite ending on a bitter-sweet note, this movie won’t win Best Picture. It’s unable to infuse our hearts with passion. A best Picture has to have a runaway train on its tracks and Cumberbatch’s great performance is so great, it’s a little too great…but not heart-warming. He harbors pain that keeps his audience detached. If only he had added an official and Royal stutter like in The Kings Speech. ♕ ♚ ♛ 1/2