The Imitation Game Movie: an Attempt to Solve the World’s Most Difficult Puzzle

The Imitation Game

Biographical film has been around for many years and is one of man’s favourite genres portraying an exciting insight into a significant person capturing histories events. Most people like this genre as they get to see an exciting version of a story in which fascinates them and people would rather be told the cute and happy versions of these films because they like to have all their movies end “happily ever after” but that’s not always the case. When you look at the meaning of biographical it is something completely different, we are meant to be told the truth and nothing but in these films to get a good perspective of what happened but when we watch films that have been historically distorted just to make the movie a more engaging narrative for the viewer’s we are given misconceptions as to what really happened. One film portrayed wrongly is the 2014 academy award winning “The Imitation Game” it follows a man during WW2 named Alan Turing on his quest to solve the world’s hardest puzzle.

Alan Turing is recently well known for his involvement into breaking Enigma supposedly an unbreakable code that could take 20 million years to try every combination. Alan Turing and another mathematician Gordon Welchman collaborated together to make the upgraded Bombe which was a deciphering machine but did not have the capacity or knowledge to break Enigma. The Bombe machine was firstly built on the 18th or March 1940 and greatly contributed to the war effort. Without Turing’s machine the war would have taken longer by est. 2 years and saved millions of lives. Turing and his fellow accomplices were told to stay quiet about the whole operation and that they should stay away from one another. Although Turing was a war hero he got trialled for indecency to another man and was forced to take pills to make him normal. Alan Turing, the world’s most important code breaker committed suicide on the 7th of June 1954 age 41 after poisoning his own apple with cyanide because he felt so weak and tired and all he wanted to do was live peacefully with his machines.

Alan Turing was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 film “The Imitation Game” which the story of Alan Turing and the rise of his code breaking machine is told. The film includes many historically correct facts displaying on the surface quite an accurate representation of his life during WW2 and what it entitled for him. On closer inspection of the movie itself you can see some historical errors made in the movie and also they are not errors they are out there to create tension and add a certain dramatic affect to how his life really played out. Although there are many differences between the movie and non-fiction it isn’t too much of a problem as they are small things that don’t ultimately change our view of the person in focus and what happened to him.

Well throughout the film there are key events that have stood out to the viewers as being important to his life and his story but not all are true. The fact that he got investigated for being a Soviet Spy is false he was never suspected and in fact the real Soviet Spy worked in a whole other group to Turing they never contacted or met each other. The whole relationship in the movie which shifted the audiences view on certain characters was completely invented through thin air. Also the detective that uncovers Turing’s homosexual tendencies was stretched a bit far in the movie, he has a fake name and he never suspected Alan of being a spy only thought that he was suspicious.

Now although the movie made some false historical instances in their film they did stick to the real story of Alan Turing mostly all throughout the film. Alan’s personality is said to be a perfect recreation of the man himself with Benedict showing a massive amount of skill on stage. The Bombe in the movie looks nearly basically the exact same as the real one apart from the red wires that flow nearly completely over it most likely to give the perception that the machine was alive and that it was Alan’s baby and most prised piece of work.

The film won many prestigious awards such as best adapted screenplay and also winning the Palm Springs International Film Festival. This film is obviously looked upon in good nature winning multiple awards for best film and well adapted screen play. Biopic films have been around for so long that people really forget about what they are truly meant to be about. Biographical films such as this are indeed doing the name well but others use false accounts to spice the story up so more people will feel inclined to go watch it in the cinemas. At the moment the only thing producers worry about is money they don’t really care about how people can be portrayed in the wrong light and that it affects how that person will be remembered for years to come because people will base their judgments on what they have seen believing it to be true when in fact it is usually not.

By Angus