[Film review] The Imitation Game (2014)

Perhaps this is one of the most surprising films of 2014, because it has left me a great disappointment. I heard of the name of Alan Turing the first time around 5 years ago when reading a book named The Code Book by Simon Singh. This book dedicates a whole chapter to a encrypting machine called Enigma, including some of achievements of breaking down it done by Polish decryption experts in the period just prior to WWII, and achievements from the legendary Bletchley Park in Britain during WWII. Alan Turing is the most prominent figure at that time, no doubt. I also learnt about Turing afterward, and has taken some liking to him since then, a short-lived genius.

And Turing in The Imitation Game is quite different. It’s a Turing who is dramatized terribly in a movie which is dramatized even more. To the extent of phoniness. Turing (the character in the movie) is described as a super-hero who engages in the most intellectually quintessential place of Britain at that time. Ignore the fact that the movie depicts Turing mistakenly and exaggeratedly, just mention the logic behind the plot. The story of Turing (the character) and his partners’ achievements is similar to a tale of being hinted by some god in a summer night. So right in the beginning Turing (the character) rushes into sketching a machine which would be used to break down the Enigma, while during the movie progress there are no suggestions for us to know what is based upon or who he is inherited from in order to create that machine. There is only a mention of Polish in an early scene in the movie as smugglers who slipped the Enigma machine into Britain. And afterward, Turing (the character) and his partners act as God, just do it and achieve it.

The movie is overstated and inflated dramatically from the plot to dialogues, which easily arouse viewers’ emotion, as a line in the movie spoken by Turing (the character), “it’s because it feels good”. But for me, also copying another line right after (spoken by Turing the character too): sometimes I can't enjoy what supposedly feels good, I have to think what is logical, which really and truly feels good.

About a mathematics genius, an alleged father of computer science and artificial intelligence, the movie just delivers some hollow feelings. Alan Turing, I would meet you only through words and books.