The Imitation Game
The Imitation Game is a 2014 American period biographical thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, based on the 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges.
This article is about the film. For the testing technique, see Turing test. For other uses, see The Imitation Game (disambiguation).The Imitation Game
- Black Bear Pictures
- Bristol Automotive
- Orange Corp
- August 29, 2014 (Telluride Film Festival)
- November 28, 2014 (United States)
115 minutes[1]
English
$14 million[4]
$233.6 million[5]
The film's title quotes the name of the game cryptanalyst Alan Turing proposed for answering the question "Can machines think?", in his 1950 seminal paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence". The film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, who decrypted German intelligence messages for the British government during World War II. Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Charles Dance, and Mark Strong appear in supporting roles.
The Imitation Game was released theatrically in the United States on November 28, 2014. The film grossed over $233 million worldwide on a $14 million production budget, making it the highest-grossing independent film of 2014. The film received critical acclaim but faced significant criticism for its historical inaccuracies, including depicting several events that had never taken place in real life.[6][7] It received eight nominations at the 87th Academy Awards (including Best Picture), winning for Best Adapted Screenplay; five nominations at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards; and three nominations at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards. It also received nine BAFTA nominations and won the People's Choice Award at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival.
Plot[edit]
In 1951, police investigate the mathematician Alan Turing after an apparent home break-in. During his interrogation, Turing talks of his work at Bletchley Park during WWII.
In 1928, the young Turing is constantly bullied at boarding school. Developing a friendship with Christopher Morcom, who sparks his interest in cryptography, he soon develops romantic feelings. However, Christopher shortly dies from tuberculosis.
When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Turing joins the cryptography team of Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards in Bletchley Park, directed by Commander Alastair Denniston. They are to analyze the Enigma machine, which the Nazis use to send coded messages.
Difficult to work with, and believing his colleagues inferior, Turing works alone to design a machine to decipher Enigma messages. When Denniston refuses to fund the machine's £100,000 construction cost, Turing contacts Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who makes him team leader and funds them. He fires Furman and Richards and places a difficult crossword in newspapers to find replacements.
Cambridge graduate Joan Clarke passes Turing's test but her family will not allow her to work with the male cryptographers. Turing arranges for her to live and work with the women who intercept the messages, and shares his plans with her. Clarke helps Turing warm to the others, who begin to respect him.
Turing's machine, which he names Christopher, is constructed but cannot determine the Enigma encryption settings quickly enough; the Germans reset them each day. Denniston orders it to be destroyed and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers threaten to leave if Turing goes.
When Clarke plans to leave because of her parents, Turing proposes, which she accepts. During their engagement party, Turing confirms his homosexuality to Cairncross, who advises he keep secret.
Overhearing a clerk talking about messages she receives from the same German coder, Turing has an epiphany: he can program the machine to decode words he already knows exist in certain messages. A German coder always opening his first message with a standard plaintext German script reveals enough of the day's Enigma code for Christopher to quickly decode all the day's messages. Recalibrating the machine, it quickly decodes a message, and the cryptographers celebrate.
Discovering a convoy is about to be attacked, Turing realizes that if they suddenly react to prevent it the Germans will know Enigma is compromised and change it. Therefore, the team cannot act on every decoded message, so don't to save the convoy although Peter begs them, as his brother is part of it. Turing creates a statistical model to choose the warnings to send to maximize destruction and minimize detection.
Discovering Cairncross is a Soviet spy, Turing confronts him. He argues that the Soviets are allies, working for the same goals, and threatens to retaliate by disclosing Turing's sexuality. When the top MI6 agent Stewart Menzies appears to threaten Clarke, Turing reveals that Cairncross is a spy. Menzies already knew, leaking misinformation to the Soviets for British benefit.
Turing urges Clarke to leave Bletchley Park, telling her he is a homosexual. She always suspected but insists they would have been happy together anyway. Fearing for her safety, Turing says he never cared for her, and only used her for her cryptography skills.
Although heartbroken, Clarke stays on, knowing how important it is. She refuses to bow down to what Turing or her parents want her to do, or what they think of her decisions.
After the war, Menzies has the cryptographers destroy the evidence as MI6 wants governments to believe they have unbreakable code machines. The team should never meet again or share what they have done.
In 1952, Turing is convicted of gross indecency and undergoes chemical castration instead of prison, so he can continue his work. Clarke visits him, witnesses his physical and mental deterioration, and tries to comfort him.
The epilogue shows Turing committed suicide on June 7, 1954, after a year of government-mandated hormonal therapy. In 2013, Queen Elizabeth II granted him a posthumous Royal Pardon. Historians estimate that breaking Enigma shortened the war by over two years, saving over 14 million lives; and Turing's work was the first step towards today's computers.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Before Cumberbatch joined the project, Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing Turing.[8][9][10][11][12] In the end, DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the script reverted to the screenwriter. Black Bear Pictures subsequently committed to finance the film for $14 million.[4][13][14] Various directors were attached during development including Ron Howard and David Yates.[15] In December 2012, it was announced that Headhunters director Morten Tyldum would helm the project, making the film his English-language directorial debut.[16][17]
Release[edit]
Marketing[edit]
Following the Royal Pardon granted by the British government to Turing on December 24, 2013, the filmmakers released the first official promotional photograph of Cumberbatch in character beside Turing's bombe.[25][26] In the week of the anniversary of Turing's death in June 2014, Entertainment Weekly released two new stills which marked the first look at the characters played by Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Matthew Beard, and Allen Leech.[27] On what would have been Turing's 102nd birthday on June 23, Empire released two photographs featuring Mark Strong and Charles Dance in character. Promotional stills were taken by photographer Jack English, who also photographed Cumberbatch for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.[28]
Princeton University Press and Vintage Books both released film tie-in editions of Andrew Hodges' biography Alan Turing: The Enigma in September 2014.[29] The first UK and US trailers were released on July 22, 2014.[30] The international teaser poster was released on September 18, 2014, with the tagline "The true enigma was the man who cracked the code".[31]
In November 2014, the Weinstein Company co-hosted a private screening of the film with Digital Sky Technologies billionaire Yuri Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Attendees of the screening at Los Altos Hills, California included Silicon Valley's top executives, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Airbnb's Nathan Blecharczyk, and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Director Tyldum, screenwriter Moore, and actress Knightley were also in attendance.[32] In addition, Cumberbatch and Zuckerberg presented the Mathematics Prizes at the Breakthrough Awards on November 10, 2014, in honour of Turing.[33]
The bombe re-created by the filmmakers has been on display in a special The Imitation Game exhibition at Bletchley Park since November 10, 2014. The year-long exhibit features clothes worn by the actors and props used in the film.[34]
The official film website allowed visitors to unlock exclusive content by solving cryptic crossword puzzles supposedly conceived by Turing.[35] The website puzzle was a shorter version[36] of the Daily Telegraph puzzle of January 13, 1942 that was actually used in Bletchley Park recruitment during the war[37] (and the puzzle was not set by Turing, who was no good at them).[36] Google, which sponsored the New York Premiere of the film, launched a competition called "The Code-Cracking Challenge" on November 23, 2014. It is a skill contest where entrants must crack a code provided by Google. The prize/s will be awarded to entrant/s who crack the code and submit their entry the fastest.[38]
In November 2014, ahead of the film's US release, The New York Times reprinted the 1942 puzzle from The Daily Telegraph used in recruiting codebreakers at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Entrants who solved the puzzle could mail in their results for a chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of Bletchley Park.[39]
TWC launched a print and online campaign on January 2, 2015, featuring testimonials from leaders in the fields of technology, military, academia, and LGBTQ groups (all influenced by Turing's life and accomplishments) to promote the film and Turing's legacy. Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales all gave tribute quotes. There were also testimonials from LGBT leaders including HRC president Chad Griffin and GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis and from military leaders including the 22nd United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates.[40][41][42][43]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The Imitation Game grossed $91.1 million in the United States and Canada, and $142.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $233.5 million, against a budget of $14 million.[5] It was the top-grossing independent film release of 2014.[49]
Debuting in four theaters in Los Angeles and New York on November 28, the film grossed $479,352 in its opening weekend with a $119,352 per-screen-average, the second highest per-screen-average of 2014 and the 7th highest of all time for a live-action film. Adjusted for inflation, it outperformed The King's Speech ($88,863 in 2010) and The Artist ($51,220 in 2011), which were also released on their respective Thanksgiving weekends. The film expanded into additional markets on December 12 and was released nationwide on Christmas Day.[50][51][52]
The film opened at number two at the UK box office behind Interstellar, earning $4.3 million from 459 screens. Its opening was 107% higher than Argo, 81% higher than Philomena and 26% higher than The Iron Lady.[53][54]
Critical response[edit]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 90% based on 287 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "With an outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch illuminating its fact-based story, The Imitation Game serves as an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic' genre."[55] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 71 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[56] The film received a rare average grade of "A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore, and a 90% "definite recommend" rating from its core audience, according to PostTrak. It was also included in both the National Board of Review and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of 2014".[57][58][59]
Social action[edit]
In January 2015, Cumberbatch, comedian-actor Stephen Fry, producer Harvey Weinstein, and Turing's great-niece Rachel Barnes launched a campaign to pardon the 49,000 gay men convicted under the same law that led to Turing's chemical castration. An open letter published in The Guardian urged the British government and the Royal family, particularly Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to aid the campaign.[95]
The Human Rights Campaign's Chad Griffin also offered his endorsement, saying: "Over 49,000 other gay men and women were persecuted in England under the same law. Turing was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. The others were not. Honor this movie. Honor this man. And honor the movement to bring justice to the other 49,000."[96] Aiding the cause were campaigner Peter Tatchell, Attitude magazine, and other high-profile figures in the gay community.[97]
In February 2015, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Jessica Alba, Bryan Cranston, and Anna Wintour among others joined the petition at Pardon49k.org demanding pardons for victims of anti-gay laws.[98][99] Historians, including Justin Bengry of Birkbeck University of London and Matt Houlbrook of the University of Birmingham, argued that such a pardon would be "bad history" despite its political appeal, because of the broad variety of cases in which the historical laws were applied (including cases of rape) and the distortion of history resulting from an attempt to clean up the wrongdoings of the past post facto. Bengry also cites the existing ability of those convicted under repealed anti-homosexuality laws to have their convictions declared spent.[100]
This petition eventually resulted in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, informally known as the Alan Turing law, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts, and which was implemented on January 31, 2017.[101] As the law and the disregard process applies only to England and Wales, groups in Northern Ireland and Scotland have campaigned for equivalent laws in their jurisdictions.[102][103]