The Imitation Game (2014)

 "You just defeated Nazism with a crossword puzzle..."

I've been waiting to see this film for years. It's very good: Alan Turing deserved a biopic, amd he needed to wait until an age where homophobia, if not cured, is at least disapproved of by the law. If only we could say the same of transphobia.

Benedict Cumberbatch is extraordinary. Keira Knighlley is good. Allen Leach is subtly superb as John Cairncross, a Soviet spy and one of the Cambridge Five. Bloody traitor, and blackmailer to boot. His development is very clever indeed. Mark Strong is perfect casting as Stewart Menzies, or C.

This ois a fairly standard film, not brilliant by any means, The script and plot are pedestrian. Yet the themes are huge: the appaling treatment, of gay men in the '40s and '50s; the fat that those who persecuted this war hero were traitors; and, most clearly, autism.

Turing's life was tragic. Deeply so. Cumberbatch shows this so well. Yet his genius shines through here, with allusions to the Turing Test. And, as important as the injustice dine to this British hero because of his sexuality may be, he is portrayed here quite explicitly as autistic. And that may well describe the man. But we should not assume either way. Whether autistic or living with metaphor-loving allistic behaviour like myself, we all owe a huge debt to the real Alan Turing. For our computing, and for our freedom. 

The film is... ok. But Cumberbatch is superb.