The Imitation Game
The Imitation Game is a 2014 American biographical thriller film directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, based on the 1983 biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. 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.
Following its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 2014, The Imitation Game was released theatrically in the United States by The Weinstein Company on November 14. It 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. It received eight nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay. It also received five nominations at the Golden Globes, three at the SAG Awards and nine at the BAFTAs. Cumberbatch and Knightley's highly acclaimed performances were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress respectively at each award.
Plot
In 1951, mathematician Alan Turing is questioned by police after an apparent home break-in, and he talks of his work at Bletchley Park during WWII.In 1928, Turing, constantly bullied at boarding school, befriends Christopher Morcom, who sparks his interest in cryptography. Turing's romantic interest is frustrated when Christopher dies of tuberculosis.
When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Turing is an established mathematician. He joins the cryptography team of Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman, and Charles Richards in Bletchley Park, directed by Commander Alastair Denniston. Their main employment is analysis of the Enigma machine the Wehrmacht uses to send coded messages. Difficult to work with, and believing his colleagues to be inferior, Turing works alone to design a deciphering machine, which he names "Christopher". When Denniston refuses to fund the £100,000 construction cost, Turing contacts Prime Minister Winston Churchill who appoints him as team leader and provides the funds. Turing then fires Furman and Richards and places a difficult crossword in newspapers as a test to find replacements.
Cambridge graduate Joan Clarke passes Turing's test but her family refuses her permission 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 is constructed but cannot determine the Enigma encryption settings quickly enough; as the Germans reset them each day. Denniston orders it destroyed and Turing fired, and the other cryptographers threaten to leave. When Clarke plans to quit because of her parents, Turing proposes, which she accepts. During their engagement party, Turing confirms his homosexuality to Cairncross, who advises him to keep it a secret.
Overhearing a clerk talking about messages received from the same German coder, Turing has an epiphany: he can program the machine to decode words he knows exist in certain messages. The theory is proven correct when the German coder consistently opens messages with a standard plaintext German script, which reveals enough of the daily Enigma code to permit decoding of that day's messages. The cryptographers celebrate this breakthrough. Discovering through decoded intercepts that a convoy is in danger of a German attack, Turing fears a sudden response will notify the Germans that Enigma is compromised and change it. The team concludes they cannot act on every decoded message, and they issue no warning about the attack on the convoy, even though Peter, whose brother is serving in the convoy, begs them. Turing creates a statistical model to select which intelligence to act on, to maximize effect on the enemy while minimizing the risk of German suspicion.
Turning confronts Cairncross, who he has uncovered as a Soviet spy. Cairncross argues the Soviets are allies working for the same goals, and threatens to retaliate by disclosing Turing's sexuality. When MI6 agent Stewart Menzies appears to threaten Clarke, Turing shares his revelation about Cairncross. Menzies reveals in turn that he already knew, and is using Cairncross to leak misinformation to the Soviets for British benefit. Turing urges Clarke to leave Bletchley Park and admits his sexuality. She admits always being suspicious but insists they would have been happy together anyway. Fearing for her safety, Turing replies he never cared for her, and only used her for her cryptography skills. The heartbroken Clarke stays on, defying her parents and Turing.
After the war, Menzies has the cryptographers destroy all traces of the project, as MI6 wants foreign governments to feel secure using their own code machines without fear of British interception. The team is instructed never to meet again or share what they have done. In 1952, Turing is convicted of gross indecency and undergoes chemical castration to be spared from 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 died by 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 2 years, saving over 14 million lives. Turing's work is now recognized as an essential step toward the development of modern computers.
Cast
Production
Development
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. 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. Various directors were attached during development including Ron Howard and David Yates. In December 2012, it was announced that Morten Tyldum would direct, making the film his English-language directorial debut.Production design
The bombe seen in the film is based on a replica of Turing's original machine, which is housed in the museum at Bletchley Park. However, production designer Maria Djurkovic admitted that her team made the machine more cinematic by making it larger and having more of its internal mechanisms visible.The costumes were designed by Sammy Sheldon Differ, using as many authentically 1940s pieces as possible. Benedict Cumberbatch had "frequent conversations" with Differ to develop his character's wardrobe and physical mannerisms. Where original costumes were not available, the team commissioned reproductions, using appropriate fabrics like linen and cotton. Differ explained, "those materials can be made to drape in a particular way, and the way they sit on the body resists duplication".
Filming
began on September 15, 2013, in Britain. Filming locations included Turing's former school, Sherborne, Bletchley Park, where Turing and his colleagues worked during the war, and Central Saint Martins campus on Southampton Row in London. Other locations included towns in England such as Nettlebed and Chesham. Scenes were also filmed at Bicester Airfield and outside the Law Society building in Chancery Lane, and at West London Film Studios. Principal photography finished on November 11, 2013.The Weinstein Company acquired the film for $7 million in February 2014, the highest amount ever paid for US distribution rights at the European Film Market. The film was also a recipient of Tribeca Film Festival's Sloan Filmmaker Fund, which grants filmmakers funding and guidance with regard to innovative films that are concerned with science, mathematics, and technology.
Music
In June 2014, it was announced that Alexandre Desplat would compose the film's score. It was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in London. Desplat uses continuous piano arpeggios to represent both Turing's thinking mind and the workings of a mechanical machine. He said of the complexity of the continuity and structure of the score:hen the camera at the end of the film has those beautiful shots of the young boy, the young Alan, and he's meeting with the professor who's telling him his friend Christopher is dead, and the camera is pushing in on him, I play Christopher's theme that we heard very early on in the film. There's a simple continuity there. It's the accumulation of these moments that I can slowly but surely play that makes it even stronger.
The score received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score, losing to the score of The Grand Budapest Hotel, also composed by Desplat.
Release
Marketing
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. 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. 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.Princeton University Press and Vintage Books both released film tie-in editions of Andrew Hodges' biography Alan Turing: The Enigma in September 2014. The first UK and US trailers were released on July 22, 2014. The international teaser poster was released on September 18, 2014, with the tagline "The true enigma was the man who cracked the code".
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. In addition, Cumberbatch and Zuckerberg presented the Mathematics Prizes at the Breakthrough Awards on November 10, 2014, in honour of Turing.
The bombe re-created by the filmmakers was on display in a special The Imitation Game exhibition at Bletchley Park beginning November 10, 2014. The year-long exhibit featured clothes worn by the actors and props used in the film.
The official film website allowed visitors to unlock exclusive content by solving cryptic crossword puzzles supposedly conceived by Turing. The website puzzle was a shorter version of the Daily Telegraph puzzle of January 13, 1942 that was actually used in Bletchley Park recruitment during the war. 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.
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.
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 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.