The Imitation Game- Page 3

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/13/15 at 12:33pm

If their intention was to do anything but what they did, they failed, and that makes it worse, not better.

Updated On: 1/13/15 at 12:33 PM

[Bucky Builder]

Posted: 1/17/15 at 7:05am

I really didn't care much for this film. I think it's an incredible story but not an incredible film. It's too safe and conventional. Benedict was great in it. Can't say I agree on Kiera Knightley's nomination or The director nomination.

Updated On: 1/17/15 at 07:05 AM

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 1/17/15 at 9:46am

BREAKING THE CODE! So much better--and even sexier!--than this crappy film.

And somebody needs to explain the hoopla over the execrable Benedict Cumberbatch to me at once. It all feels like some sick practical joke the media is playing on us, like someone said somewhere a la RHINESTONE: "I'll bet I can make an acclaimed star out of the next person who walks in this bar..."

[haterobics]

Posted: 1/18/15 at 1:25am

On the flipside, for those who want to know more about Stephen Hawking, but only wish they could do it with Benedict Cumberbatch as Hawking, you're in luck!

He starred in a 2004 BBC TV film!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_(2004_film)

[little_sally]

Posted: 1/18/15 at 3:25pm

I saw this last night and thought it was just a by-the-numbers biopic and a whole lot of Oscar bait. Cumberbatch, whom I'm normally a fan of, was merely good, in some cases great, but never incredible.

[South Florida]

Posted: 1/24/15 at 12:02am

Meh

[Scripps2]

Posted: 1/24/15 at 4:02pm

For me this film is a case of glass two-thirds full. And in saying that I'm going to set the film within a wider context.

This is an important story that needs to be told, not just for those in the relatively clued-up West but for those in countries where homophobia is still government policy. And the production team could have made a much worse job of this than they have done.

Did it rewrite history? Yes, to some extent, but doing so was endorsed by that other glorious bugger whose talents were cut short by state-endorsed homophobia several decades before Turing. And the detail of those rewrites offend different people in different ways without altering the overall message of the film, namely that state-endorsed homophobia has proved time-and-again to be a damn good way of cutting off your nose to spite your face. No-one is complaining that Christopher-the-computer was portrayed in Turing's home rather than in Manchester University, where it is still kept in a high-security vault today. My goodness, even when I was there in the late 1980s you had to request special permission from the highest echelons of the University if you wanted to see it.

And what about the history it didn't rewrite? They managed to resist the temptation to have Ian Fleming pop across the lawn from his own hut at Bletchley Park to shake up a cocktail with Mr Turing!

I went into this film hoping that it would go some way towards re-addressing the balance with regard to the (mis)perception that the gay contribution to WWII (at least in the UK) was all treasonous. Fcuking hell - how many plays/films have there been about that?! An Englishman Abroad; Another Country; A Question of Attribution; Single Spies. If these things can be measured, then Turing's positive contribution to WWII obliterates the negatives of the much-higher profile traitors. And what impressed me so much about The Imitation Game is that it not only succeeded at what I hoped for but it actually and explicitly set out it's stall to do so early on in the film.

I didn't perceive film as portraying Turing as a joyless nerd because he was gay but because the film, borrowing heavily from Curious Incident, bought into the current zeitgeist whereby every amateur shrink and pseudo intellectual assumes that because you're a mathematician you must have Asperger's.

As far as I'm concerned Breaking the Code was a sanitised, paint-by-numbers guide to the facts that was palatable to the homophobic 80s/90s audience and something you could easily forget. How can you take Derek Jacobi seriously when, as he sets off for his run he doesn't look as though he'll make it to the end of the street. I've never had opportunity to see it on stage - when was there last a production?? All of the other, negative history plays I refer to receive plenty of productions.

And let's put the boot in to the risible Stoppard plundering-of-history-for-attempted-commercial-gain that was Enigma. Now that really was a Turing straight-wash. If they'd made The Imitation Game back then, with Dougray Scott in the lead, it would have probably eliminated the nerdiness of the Cucumber Patch (thank you Miranda) portrayal and had Turing simply as someone who was achieving extraordinary things when all the odds were stacked against him.

But would that have been justified? We actually know very little about Turing's character. Of all three Turing portrayals, I still prefer the docu-drama with Ed (making up for Dad's mistakes?) Stoppard and Henry Goodman. But I'm also aware that this is Turing as I would like him to be rather than necessarily how he was. Updated On: 1/25/15 at 04:02 PM