Benedict Cumberbatch , who stars as computing pioneer Alan Turing , is the best thing about the mismatched period drama The Imitation Game .
A pair of movies about British geniuses are about to go head - to - capitulum in the year - ending awards slipstream . Both are science - minded full point dramatic play cast with rising - star actors whose various performance — Cumberbatch as Turing , and Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything — bring appeal to movie that otherwise fall dupe to some of the biopic genre ’s most common clichés .
The Imitation Game offers Cumberbatch his most prominent cinematic leading use to engagement ; other than TV ’s Sherlock and the little - seen Fifth Estate , he ’s mostly made his marking in supporting roles , particularly Star Trek Into Darkness ( for trivia role , it ’s worth note that he ’s also play Hawking , in a 2004 BBC yield ) .
As one would expect from the intellectual - thespian lump du jour , he plays Turing with rank precision , fleshing out a serviceman who left very fiddling in the style of factual strong-arm recordings behind . Rather than an impersonation — despite the title , Redmayne ’s highly physical turn is the more imitative of the two — Cumberbatch ’s performance prod deeply to bring refinement to the prickly , socially awkward misfit who becomes an unlikely war hero , escape Britain ’s top - hidden , Enigma - obsessed computer code - breaking team during World War II , and more or less inventing the computer along the manner .
Though he clashes with much of the radical ( which includes Matthew Goode and Downton Abbey ’s Allen Leech ) and frustrate his superiors ( Mark Strong as more sympathy MI6 head Stewart Menzies ; Game of Thrones ’ Charles Dance as blustery Commander Alastair Denniston , who ran computer code - busting HQ Bletchley Park ) , Alan eventually exuberate with service from Joan Clarke ( Keira Knightley ) , whose family depend askance at her numerical prowess .
Their get together of the mind eventually lead to a deep sympathy , and they become engaged to satisfy Joan ’s parent , who fear their girl ’s smarts will hamper her hunt for a husband ( major suspension system of disbelief required there , since Knightley trend a salient figure in her 1940s role wear chicness ) . The rigorously platonic family relationship also offers a convenient cover for Alan , who as a gay man was in constant danger of being contain — which , of course , he finally was .
satisfying direction from Morten Tyldum , a Norwegian filmmaker making his English - language entry ( control out his 2011 thriller Headhunters if you missed its limited stateside release ) , manages to bring suspense to a tale that contain an awful lot of tilt and shrink from with machines . But those elements are necessary parts of the storey , and one ca n’t fault screenwriter Graham Moore , who adapts from Andrew Hodges ’ Alan Turing : The Enigma , from including them .
Where Moore comes up shortsighted : meticulously structuring The Imitation Game into three trenchant part , which are interlacing throughout the film and chronicle three eras of Alan ’s lifespan . In his embarkment - school adolescence ( teenager thespian Alex Lawther is well - mold as baby Cumberbatch ) , Alan ’s sexuality awakens when he falls hard for a schoolfellow ; we also see him later in life , post - war , when the jurisprudence goes after him for his “ homosexual Acts of the Apostles . ” The primary chunk of the celluloid , of row , takes position during the Bletchley Park earned run average . Though each section actuate the plot forward , finding the themes in Alan ’s animation that make him both a praise - worthy icon and a biopic - worthy subject ( weigh ’em : he was persecuted for being gay , he was a clandestine war paladin , he was a long - distance runner , he invented the computer … it ’s practically an Oscar - grow petri beauty ) , it ’s done with a sure heavy - handedness that is n’t always balanced by Cumberbatch ’s measured operation .
To put it another way , this is the kind of movie that thinks it ’s adding a circumstances of abstruse meaning by repeating the same clunky rail line , seemingly ripped from a bumper sticker , in each of its chapters : “ Sometimes it is the mass who no one imagines anything of , who do the things that no one can opine . ” Explicitly stating the Moral of the Story not once but three time just feels lazy . Yeah , the audience probably is n’t on the same hotshot level as Turing — but that does n’t mean you have to sporadically break the flick to check that everyone is get the message .
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