Yes, I agree with you both. And it was also a wonderful parallel between the fast-paced music reflecting the workings of his mind and his fast-moving body. 

http://www.turingfilm.com

I just watched this film which wonderfully complements “The Imitation Game”. More documentary, more intimate, covering Alan Turing’s whole life but conceived as a two-character play. The scenes between Alan and his psychiatrist Franz Greenbaum are interwoven with testimonies of his nephew Dermot Turing, Dr Greenbaum’s daughters who knew Alan well, biographers, scientists, and former colleagues. 

Thee film stresses the importance of Christopher Morcom calling him the most important person in Alan’s life, a fact so beautifully reflected in TIG. The film also describes in harrowing detail the effects of the hormone therapy which makes Benedict’s portrayal even more heartbreaking.

Ed Stoppard does a very good job at playing Alan down to his nail-biting habit. His outward appearance is very different from Alan Turing’s but you feel that he has studied the character thoroughly and shows a lot of empathy. 

Anyone interested in the historical background and Alan Turing’s life beyond the periods covered by TIG should have a look at this one.

This is truly an important film and I am very glad BC is front and centre in it. 

His work in it is exceptional and he really does just inhabit Turing from start to finish.  There is so much he says even when he is just standing there.  It is almost scary to watch his performance - it is so nuanced and sustained.  I never once though of Sherlock when viewing this film. 

Brilliant as Cumberbatch is (and he is absolutely brilliant) he is supported well with an excellent supporting cast and finely structured film to fortify this remarkable performance.  Keira Knightly is a perfect foil for Turing - a very human and warm Joan Clarke who contrasts nicely with Alan's initially prickly and distanced adult personality.  They are a wonderful cinematic pair.  The rest of his "crew" are also well played.  Even though Turing can't really relate to them on the same plane as he does to Joan, he does become closer to them (and they to him) and there is a kind of bond between all the team members by the time the code is cracked.  

Some of the scenes just took my breath away - not just the important one near the end when Joan discovers the horrible inhuman treatments that Alan was forced into taking, but also earlier ones like when he pretends to sluff Joan off to protect her and tells her he really doesn't care for her and that he was just using her for the sake of the project.  You can see with his eyes (and his whole being) that his words are false but you can also see that he is saying it with enough conviction that she will believe him.  Tremendously hard bit of acting - to make both things believable both in the on screen world and to the audience.  Just a powerhouse of a scene! 

I think BC really got who Turing was at his core.  Here is a summation from BC himself about Turing (it comes from the production notes produced by the Weinstein Company) -

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH ON ALAN TURING:He had a unique and driven and asymmetrical personality – he was very high-functioning, he had great empathy levels and was especially caring and had a great affinity with children. He had this unfettered ability to communicate with people and not feel that he was constrained by the usual platitudes, the status quo interaction demanded of a man who was so focusedand slightly shy. He was seen as an odd fish, "an odd duck" as his mum called it. He was so capable, so fast-thinking, and so healthy. He was a very physical man – he ran marathons to near-Olympic standard and competed in cross-country events. He would run from his house in Wilmslow to work at Manchester University, a 20 kilometer round trip. I talked to people who had known him during his Manchester days and they all said how extraordinarily kind he was, polite and diffident. He didn't often make direct eye contact, but when he did, you felt bathed in a very humane, intrigued, witty and rather lovely personality. He was very focused and often deemed to be in his own world, in his own line of thinking, in his own thought pattern and he would do some very eccentric things, but he was very open about them. He was a remarkable human being, a very kind soul, a very benign, slightly gauche, but a very doggedly determined, single-minded human being of extraordinary talent and ability. The tragedy of his life is not only that it ended so early, but that he was persecuted in a timeof intolerance for his sexuality.

Even reading his summation makes me breathless. 

I think the young lad who played Turing in his school days was excellent too.  It was an extremely difficult role to play and he knocked it out of the park (especially in the scene where he finds out Christopher has died - a direct parallell to the scene that impressed me so much with BC and KK).  The only thing I found slightly distracting was that the boy's mouth was nothing like BC's (that distinctive cupid's bow BC has is decidedly absent in Alex Lawther) but the performance is the thing - not one tiny physical difference, so it didn't impact (I mention it here now mainly because I was struck by this when I watched it initially) on the stunning performance of the lad.

The musical score was remarkable (I hope the production wins something for that as well).  As was the costuming and sets.  I do think the director Morten Tyldum has moved into a whole new class of notice because of this film.  He should get recognition for this achievement indeed. 

Here's hoping the whole kit and kaboodle gets an truckload of recognition (awards, nominations, praise, notice and bums in the seats) for this phenomenal film!

-Val

 


 

The scene where Allen tries to put Joan off broke my heart in a dozen different ways.  When she called him a monster you could see him flinch.  The words caused him physical pain!

Didn't he put the phone down?  He seemed to be wanting to do it but changed his mind about following through (if I remember - it's a while since I've seen it now).   There was quite a short period of time between him being blackmailed and confessing, but it wasn't clear if or when he would have confessed if Joan wasn't at risk.  I'm still a bit uncomfortable about that - I can see that it makes a more exciting story, but not sure it was necessary.

I agree about the ending.   And in a way, that does seem more truthful.  I think that (almost) all the other scenes were witnessed by others - Turing was alone when he died, so nobody was ever able to tell exactly what happened.  It would have to have been an invention, however well done.   I think I prefer it being left the way it is. 

I agree about the ending too. To be honest, it was in a way a more painful ending that if they had shown him comitting sucidide. Because we could see what the "treatment" was doing and how horrible it was, in a way a suicide couldn't have shown.

I agree. And something else about the Cairncross subplot - it is also a foreshadowing of things to come because the real fear and hysteria regarding Soviet spies and gay men who could be blackmailed broke out after the War. It is has been said that in the atmosphere of the 1950s a man like Alan Turing would never have got the highly classified job he had in Bletchley Park. And if I remember correctly, he was barred from such work during the last years of his life. And he was observed by the authorities as well which may have been one of the reasons for his suicide. 

It is not a homophobic concept per se. It made them a security risk as, sadly, it made them vunerable to blackmail.

besleybean wrote:

But only cause being gay was illegal or seen as being wrong.

Exactly. It's not that a gay person was more "at risk" because they were gay. It was governement fault. By treating homosexuality as a crime they made gays vulnerable and subject to blackmail, even when they were completely innocent of any crime. In fact Turing is put in an impossible situation, because he is at mercy first of Caincross (his presumed friend), then of Menzies, who is only too happy to force Turing to do his game.

 

Davina wrote:

It is not a homophobic concept per se. It made them a security risk as, sadly, it made them vunerable to blackmail.

I suppose it's not homophobic in the sense that gay men weren't the only group that was targeted ("Sherlock" takes the view that just about everybody is vulnerable to blackmail/threats).  But what I mean is that hounding/"observing" Turing (or anyone) just because they were gay does feel homophobic - yet, the film confirms that he WAS a security risk (not just because of being gay and so having something to be blackmailed about, but because he apparently succumbed to the blackmail).  And the unpleasant truth is that, although Turing was never put in that position, the film is probably right that the potential was there - which kind of makes it right that he was seen as a risk purely because of his sexuality.

The concept does stem from homophobia (creating an environment where gay men were vulnerable to blackmail, and then seeing gay men as vulnerable to blackmail).    It was circular.   In the film, Turing's fear of exposure isn't about public shame or even that it's illegal - but about being seen as a security risk and the consequences of that (at least, that's what Cairncross threatens) - and I'm very glad that they took that approach as I think it's more consistent with the character. 

(I know nothing about wartime politics, but I tend to think that the "problem" could have been solved in a different way - by offering government protection to gay men in that situation, which would have made blackmail much more difficult). 

Last edited by Liberty (January 10, 2015 1:49 pm)