Ten years after its theatrical release, Oscar-nominated The Imitation Game holds up as a strong film from 2014 but is not without its flaws.

First and foremost, Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) was an unsung British war hero. I have to admit that I never heard of him until seeing the trailers for the film. Of course, I had never read the Andrew Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma, about his life. Imagine knowing you played a role in defeating the Nazis but not being able to tell anyone about it! This is how top-secret that their mission is. All evidence would end up being destroyed, too. Make no mistake that the film earned all of its Oscar nominations at the time. When you ignore all the inaccuracies, it’s an otherwise really good biopic. But in rewatching ten years later, I cannot ignore the criticism from the family members, let alone the author himself.

It was not until the code-breaking work started getting declassified in the 1990s that history would begin to right a wrong. For all that was declassified in the 1990s, more discoveries are taking place, including the role of women at Bletchley Park. Their role in Bletchley Park was crucial for the Allied victory in the Atlantic. But anyway, Turing was gay and British laws towards gay people in the 1940s and 1950s were not great. Ultimately, Queen Elizabeth would posthumously pardon Turing in 2013, nearly 60 years after he committed suicide. He was only 41 years old and a pioneer of modern-day computing and quite possibly artificial intelligence, too.

Turing ends up being on the unfortunate end of an interrogation following a burglary at his house. It’s not because of criminals stealing anything from the mathematician, cryptanalyst and war hero in winter 1952. It’s because of the “gross indecency” due to his being gay. Years later, we know that being LGBTQ is not a choice and it is because of our brain wiring. I know this personally from being trans, something I did not ask, want, or choose but it’s better than the alternative. This wasn’t the case in the 1940s and 1950s. But anyway, Turing’s service records were completely classified at the time and the interrogation becomes our way into his life story.

We flashback to both Turing’s childhood and his service as a code-breaker during the war. During the war, Commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance) leads a cryptography team that includes scholars, linguists, chess champions and intelligence officers. Among them are Turing, Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode), John Cairncross (Allen Leach), Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard), Keith Furman (Ilan Goodman), and Charles Richards (Jack Tarlton). Cairncross would turn out to be a double agent, working for the Soviet Union at the time. Turing requests 100,000 to build a machine but Denniston says no, thus forcing Turing to contact prime Minister Winston Churchill. Furman and Richards get replaced by whoever can solve a crossword puzzle in the newspaper.

Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) is among those able to solve the crossword puzzle, which takes place against the backdrop of the London Blitz. Codes once thought unbreakable from Germany’s Enigma machine would soon become breakable by the machine. Naturally, it’s bigger for the film than the actual one. If not for their work, perhaps the war would last into the late 1940s and along with it, another 14 million deaths. Who knows how many more Jews would be dead and unable to escape the Holocaust?

The film isn’t above asking questions like when they should act on something and when they shouldn’t. After breaking Enigma, the team realizes they have a chance to save a convoy in the Atlantic. Peter Hilton’s brother is on one of the ships. Turing informs Chief of MI6 Stewart Menzies and asks that it stay secret. They form a statistical model paves the way for acting on warnings that do the most damage against the Nazis while risking little detection of breaking Enigma.

Forced to choose between chemical castration and prison, Turing chooses the former. It’s the only way that he could continue doing his work. But of course, his mental health deteriorates through it all. Joan visits and despite her reminding him about their work, it ultimately isn’t enough. The film depicts a romantic relationship between them although Joan is clearly a beard for Turing. That said, Hodges is on recording of the script building up their relationship. When you have big-name actors appearing in the roles, it becomes impossible to not do something like that, even if it means taking dramatic liberties. I’m a stickler for accuracy but the film definitely had me buying into their relationship back in 2014. How accurate is it? Turns out it is only 42.3% accurate. Unlike the biblical epics I review, I’m not even about to break down what is true and what isn’t.

To say that Cumberbatch earns his Oscar nomination is not an understatement. Turing is a brilliant but complicated man and it requires an actor capable of delivering an intense and haunting performance. Cumberbatch rises up to the challenge. If not for Eddie Redmayne, perhaps Cumberbatch would have won the Oscar for Best Actor. But in looking back ten years later, Cumberbatch is playing the role as written in the script–there’s more to Turing that we don’t even see in the film.

The Imitation Game takes too many dramatic liberties in adapting for the screen but at the end of the day, the film does help right a wrong in recognizing the code-breakers–including Alan Turing–for their work during World War II. I should probably practice what I preach, especially in this instance, but it feels like you really need to read the book to have a better portrait of Turing. The film has some merits–it would not have multiple Oscar nominations if it didn’t–but its sole Oscar win is for an adapted screenplay that features too many historical inaccuracies and does a disservice to the actual history.

DIRECTOR: Morten Tyldum
SCREENWRITER: Graham Moore
CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech, Matthew Beard, with Charles Dance and Mark Strong

The Weinstein Company released The Imitation Game in theaters on November 14, 2014. Grade: 4/5

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