The Imitation Game

2014 • 114 minuten

Over deze film

Alan Turing famously led a motley group of scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers, in cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany's World War II Enigma machine. A intense and haunting portrayal of a brilliant, complicated man, THE IMITATION GAME follows a genius who under nail-biting pressure helped to shorten the war and, in turn, save thousands of lives.

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Sadly, the only thing this wretched movie has in common with the wonderful book it's based on is that the main character's name is Alan Turing, and they did get World War 2 correct. Everything after that is mostly nonsense. What a sorry piece of writing this is. There was so much fascinating and true material to work with (eg. Intrepid) that they chose to ignore for silly fiction. The only thing that isn't deeply disappointing is Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing. Too bad they didn't give him a real script.

Historically significantly incorrect, as the Polish were the ones who broke the Enigma, and came up with the idea and subsequently developed the machine to break the code (see https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28167071) . It was only later in the war when Poland was already conquered, and Nazi Germany developed their next level of Enigma sophistication that Turing came in.

This movie portrays an engaging story in a compelling way. It's too bad they got so much wrong, historically, in the name of drama. (E.g. Alan Turing wasn't inept socially, commander Denniston was supportive of Turing and the bombe machine, etc etc).