{"id":1905,"date":"2015-06-23T00:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-06-23T00:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/?p=1905"},"modified":"2015-06-22T15:06:46","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T15:06:46","slug":"because-god-didnt-win-the-war-the-imitation-game-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/because-god-didnt-win-the-war-the-imitation-game-review\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Because God Didn\u2019t Win the War\u2019 – The Imitation Game Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is what Alan Turing (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) had to say in connection with himself and his role in the World War II in Morten Tyldum\u2019s 2014 historical thriller The Imitation Game<\/em>. The film is loosely based on Alan Turing: The Enigma<\/em> by Andrew Hodges which is a biography on the British scientist. For the records, Alan Turing and his team deciphered the cryptic code generated by the German machine Enigma during the WWII \u2013 something which helped reduce the war by almost a couple of years, saving lives and influencing a German decline. However Turing passed away in 1954 only, apparently a suicide (though not confirmed) after he was heavily prosecuted by the British Government on charges of homosexuality (which was illegal at that time).<\/p>\n

\"The

(L-R) Keira Knightley, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Allen Leech star in The Imitation Game. (Pic courtesy: Internet)<\/p><\/div>\n

The film dwells on three temporal levels. Whereas it starts off with an interrogation of Turing in 1951, it moves back and delves mostly during the War years 1939 \u2013 1940 when Turing was working in the Bletchley Park in England trying to break the Enigma jinx and further back to 1928 when as a school boy the first streaks of his homosexual flares seem obvious. Also during these school days only, Turing\u2019s interest for cryptography, puzzles and code breaks started off in close companionship with his friend Christopher for whom he had a special affection.<\/p>\n

The crux of the film is in Alan Turing\u2019s journey to break Enigma \u2013 not by his own but in dreaming of creating a machine which will decode Enigma\u2019s codes \u2013 a machine against a machine but with inputs of a human mind. That is why he emphasizes that the machine needs to be reprogrammable, it should remember patterns that it can relate and compute with other subsequent ones \u2013 machine that goes beyond calculation. In a sense Turing at that time was probably talking about the latent image of an Artificially Intelligent expert system which he envisioned and spoke about much later than the war times.<\/p>\n

\"The

The crux of the film is in Alan Turing\u2019s journey to break Enigma. (Pic courtesy: Internet)<\/p><\/div>\n

The internet is swamped with historical inaccuracies ranging from the fact that the machine Turing designed was never named \u2018Christopher\u2019 (in memory of his dead friend of school) as the film had shown. Or for that matter when Turing sent a letter for funding to Mr. Winston Churchill he was not the Prime Minister at all as depicted in reel. There have been allegations that the machine was not completely designed by him, that there were significant contributions from others as well.<\/p>\n

Having accepted most of these as well, it will probably not be unjust to comment that even then the film succeeds in bringing forth the enigmatic story of Alan Turing which was largely unknown. The contribution of him and his team in making Enigma break has everlasting implications \u2013 but just because this had remained a war secret, Turing\u2019s influence in shaping the 20th<\/sup> century is largely unnoticed. His brilliance in formulating the Universal Machine remains confined in the more academic discourses unfortunately though that is what precedes the concept of the computer. It was Turing who designed a machine with a Control Unit having a \u2018Read\/Write\u2019 head that moves on a Tape \u2013 the basic principle on which most of today\u2019s digital mediums work including the CPU of a modern computer.<\/p>\n

The film brought its fictional tension in the form of Turing\u2019s alleged espionage links \u2013 which helped to intensify the drama and probably to bring him out as a man of integrity apart from having a scientific mind beyond excellence. Like many of the similar bio-pics which the commercial medium throws up, this exercise of showing an insanely aggressive yet \u2018brilliant\u2019 character (a scientist or an artist in most cases) who comes out to be \u2018noble\u2019 in the end has hagiographic proportions. \u00a0Like in The Theory of Everything<\/em> (on Stephen Hawking) or A Beautiful Mind<\/em> (on John Nash), The Imitation Game<\/em> also spends most time in glorifying the subjects instead of intriguing them and thereby making them humane and probably more lovable and with empathy.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

One obvious safe route that the director has taken is in dealing with Turing\u2019s alleged homo-sexuality. What are his contradictions? In 1940s how does he deal with this \u2018different\u2019 urge? Most importantly we can never understand that Turing has an inclination for the same sex apart from once when his colleague says it in a dialogue to him at his engagement party or he says the same to his fianc\u00e9e later on. If his \u2018alleged\u2019 sexual preference brought about so much pain and anguish in him (he was chemically castrated) and his indomitable scientific quest made him to choose this route in lieu of two years in prison \u2013 why didn\u2019t the crises come up during his most working years? More importantly, no one can miss the romantic environment created in the softness of the script when we first see Joan Clarke \u2013 an instant indication that Turing will fall for her. The irony of a man working for a secret cause and hiding a grave secret of his own would have made the film and the character far more invigorating. As much as the irony of a man who saved millions without them even knowing about him who couldn\u2019t save his own. These are gaps in a narrative which wishes to play on multiple planes \u2013 the issues of homosexuality, the thriller in Enigma breaking, the chill in an Espionage drama and finally a detached yet fiercely focused brilliant mind.<\/p>\n

The film travels back and forth between the three time frames and in the last one (1951) during the interrogation which started off with a burglary at his residence is when the police framed him for his \u2018indecent act\u2019 of having a sexual relation with a man much junior to him. What is interesting is the poise which Turing showed here and it is here when he first explained the concept of \u2018The Imitation Game\u2019 \u2013 a game which is nowadays known as the Turing Test. It was no doubt extremely cryptic for the interrogation officer who had no clue about Turing\u2019s involvement in building a machine to break Enigma\u2019s transmitted codes.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

As Alan Turing explains to the officer about the possibility of a machine\u2019s ability to think like a human \u2013 \u201cOf course machines can’t think as people do. A machine is different from a person. Hence, they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something, thinks differently from you, does that mean it’s not thinking? Well, we allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice-skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of different tastes, different preferences, if not, to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently? And if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say the same thing for brains built of copper and wire, steel?\u201d After 60 years from his death we don\u2019t question if the computer has a mind or not.<\/p>\n

Turing was sure of the allowance on the divergence of human behavior. His own life and his struggle with his sexual identity unfortunately didn\u2019t speak volumes of the acceptance of the differences of the human mind, body or soul. Yet in the end he was probably right \u2013 \u201cWas I God? No. Because God didn’t win the war. We did.\u201d Morten Tyldum\u2019s film in the end champions this triumph of the human spirit \u2013 the free mind which is beautiful and enigmatic.<\/p>\n

More to read<\/strong><\/p>\n

Animal Farm 1954 \u2013 An Allegorical Satire on Stalinism<\/a><\/strong>
\nThe Strange Case of Angelica \u2013 Oliveira and His Saudade<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

(All pictures used in this article are courtesy the Internet)<\/em><\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The film brought its fictional tension in the form of Turing\u2019s alleged espionage links \u2013 which helped to intensify the drama and probably to bring him out as a man of integrity apart from having a scientific mind beyond excellence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":374,"featured_media":1906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[421],"tags":[1185,1182,1186,1188,1183,1184,1187],"class_list":["post-1905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-film-reviews","tag-alan-turing","tag-alan-turing-the-enigma","tag-benedict-cumberbatch","tag-decode-enigma","tag-the-imitation-game","tag-the-imitation-game-review","tag-world-war-ii"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/learningandcreativity.com\/silhouette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}