{"id":3885,"date":"2015-01-07T07:13:43","date_gmt":"2015-01-07T12:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3885"},"modified":"2015-02-03T08:26:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T13:26:58","slug":"the-imitation-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3885","title":{"rendered":"The Imitation Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Alan

(photo: wikimedia.org)<\/p><\/div>\n

Eagerly awaited general release of The Imitation Game<\/em> (trailer<\/a>), starring Benedict Cumberbatch in a superb bit of acting, and was not disappointed. The story, hidden for almost 30 years, is by now familiar\u2014Alan Turing, the brilliant but eccentric Oxford student admitted to Bletchley Park\u2019s code-breaking team, figures out how to decrypt messages generated by the Nazis\u2019 super-secret Enigma machine, shortening WWII by two years, and, oh, by the way, inventing computers in the process.<\/p>\n

Last month Andrew Hodges, author of the book the movie\u2019s based on, was in town for a talk\u2014a bit dazed about this great success 30 years post-publication\u2014and his insights (summarized here<\/a>) were, frankly, helpful. He powerfully described the homophobia that pervaded the British intelligence services (and society in general) in the 1950\u2019s that made Turing a target. Also the greater significance of the apples, alluded to only glancingly in the movie and without context. Turing was fascinated with the Snow White story, and saying more drifts into spoiler territory.<\/p>\n

I earnestly hope someone said to him what Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) says near the end of this film. Clarke responds to Turing\u2019s lifelong struggle with being different from other boys and men, and says how he \u201csaved millions of lives by never fitting in,\u201d as Tom Long put it in The Detroit News<\/em>. Or, \u201cSometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine,\u201d says the movie\u2019s tagline.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a little too much standing in front of the marvelous prop constructed for the movie, which the producer says is like the original Turing machine, just not in a box, so you can see the works. The secondary characters are thinly developed and no doubt worthy of greater interest. However, the scenes of Turing as a young boy (Alex Lawther), trying to come to terms with his differentness, are heartbreaking. Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics rating: 89%; audience score 95%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eagerly awaited general release of The Imitation Game (trailer), starring Benedict Cumberbatch in a superb bit of acting, and was not disappointed. The story, hidden for almost 30 years, is by now familiar\u2014Alan Turing, the brilliant but eccentric Oxford student … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Imitation Game - Alan Turing shortened WWII by 2 years and invented the computer, yet \"never fitting in\" has a terrible price.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,62,265,193,266,57,66,104],"tags":[293,294,289,295,416,129],"class_list":["post-3885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-authors","category-biography","category-espionage","category-history","category-movies","category-suspense","category-the-morgue","tag-alan-turing","tag-benedict-cumberbatch","tag-bletchley-park","tag-enigma-machine","tag-real-life","tag-wars-and-conflicts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-10F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3885"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3891,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3885\/revisions\/3891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}