The Imitation Game
Director: Morten
Tyldum
Writer: Graham
Moore, Andrew Hodges (from his book)
Starring: Benedict
Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Allen Leech
Stories have
themes. They can be intended or not, perhaps accidents only noticed
long after the creators have sent their work into the ether of public
discourse. What determines the stories' cultural worth is the way in
which the creators go about exploring and examining them. How do they
use their chosen medium as a vehicle to deliver their story? Do they
understand the strengths and weaknesses of that medium, and of the
story? Does the story fit the medium, or are other considerations –
the ability to make the greatest amount of money, most likely – the
cause of it being shoehorned into a storytelling delivery service
that might not serve it right?
The Imitation Game is
a moving story that improperly uses its medium. It's a good movie
derailed by a misunderstanding of what makes great movies. It could
easily be a great book, likely the one written by Andrew Hodges that
inspired this adaptation. It could make for a great television
miniseries, allowing the weight of the horrendous decisions made by
the principal characters to have space to breathe. But mostly, it
would make for a terrific stage play. But as it stands, it stumbles
over itself repeatedly to reach moderate heights, when far greater
ones are within its reach. And that's a shame, because it has so many
wonderful ingredients.
Its
largest strength is its lead actor. Benedict Cumberbatch, as
mathematician Alan Turing, takes a different tack from his portrayal
of the BBC's Sherlock Holmes, and creates a man so rational,
pragmatic, and blunt so as to render himself almost wholly incapable
of meaningful human interaction. He sees everything as a problem to
be solved and he commits himself to work them out with tenacity and a
brusque disregard for others, alienating himself from people who are
uniquely equipped to help him get to his end goal, cracking Enigma,
the Nazi communication code and winning World War II for the Allies.
But
The Imitation Game
doesn't have enough faith in itself as a visual piece of storytelling
or in Cumberbatch to let the audience understand for themselves what
was depicted in the previous paragraph. It enlists Keira Knightley,
as Joan Clarke, Turing's onetime fiancée and coworker during WWII,
to the thankless task of explaining in no uncertain terms that Turing
must learn to be kinder to his coworkers so they will help him with
his project to build the code-cracking machine, which happens to be
the world's first computer. Clarke is a fascinating, important
historical figure herself, and when uncoupled from the chore of
telling the audience exactly what to think, Knightley shows emotional
resolve to break free from what society says she is allowed to be.
But again, repeated lines about how those that the society at large
expects the least from can do the greatest things take a sledgehammer
to the point that is already clear. Ditto ideas about how violence is
a fleeting good feeling and the inherent unfairness of
anti-homosexuality laws. When these overly inelegant thematic
explanations are tied with exposition as to how the Enigma code works
and how Turing and company plan to tackle the problem, the movie
slows to a slog.
Luckily,
director Morten Tyldum seems to recognize the wealth of talent he has
on his hands midway through The Imitation Game's
runtime. The dual rule of thematic explanation and exposition both
fade as the film moves forward, and its newfound relaxation
contributes to a far better second half. This allows for more purely
visual content to seep through the tedium of offices and corridors
where most of the film takes place, with glimpses of WWII battles and
the countryside runs Turing goes on to clear his head, showing both
the stakes of the work at hand and the ways these stressed characters
look to relieve themselves from those stakes. If only Tyldum had felt
this confidence in his story and medium from the start, then The
Imitation Game might be one for
the pantheon, or at least some best of 2014 lists.
No comments:
Post a Comment