the wonderful world of veena.

23 February 2015

movie review: the imitation game.

Let me preface this post by saying that I knew even before I saw this movie that I would love it. It's about World War Two and code breakers, and it involves actors with British accents. There was no way, save a ridiculous calamity, that I was not going to enjoy this.

I first heard about Alan Turing and his work breaking German codes during World War 2 on an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class about 2.5 years ago, and I was fascinated. Cryptography and code breaking are super cool to puzzle nerds such as myself, and it was very cool to think about how Turing and his team built the machine that eventually cracked Germany's "unbreakable" Enigma machine. So when I first began seeing previews for The Imitation Game, I was ecstatic. And with Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Turing? Sign me up.

Because the movie released in the States on Christmas Day and I flew out on the day after, I didn't get a chance to see it before I left. My first month in India was crazy, going from Bombay to Bangalore and finally to Hyderabad, and so I kind of forgot about it until all the Oscar hype of last week. And then I decided to see if it was playing in Hyderabad.

There was one show a day at the PVR in Hitech City, so I decided to make an evening of it and go this past Saturday. Because I waited and bought my ticket at the mall, my seat wasn't great [you get assigned seats at the cinemas in India], but it was at least comfortable and reclined, so I settled in for the movie.

Even though I knew I would like the movie, I didn't realized just how much I would. For one, I thought Cumberbatch was great. He really nailed his performance and brought so much depth to the role. And with a supporting cast that included Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Allan Leech, there wasn't much that could go wrong.

I liked that it moved along quickly and never felt like it was dragging. Sometimes with biographies like this, they drag on for hours and become a bit mind-numbing, but I never got bored. At just under 2 hours running time, I was really pleased with the pace of the movie.

It's tough to watch a movie in 2015 about a man who was found guilty of "gross indecency" simply because of his sexuality, but I thought the filmmakers did a fine job of covering it without sensationalizing it.

If you are interested in World War Two, code breaking, British people, and history, then you will enjoy this film.
xx

2 comments:

  1. Saw it. Liked it. Did not understand any of the code breaking stuff, but it looked like a lot of intensely intelligent fun, and after time I insertrd my own meaning and translation to each code conversation throughout the movie. Unfortunately, my translations did not crack the Enigma code. Although, they, somehow cured cancer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah, all the technical stuff was way over my head, but I think that was kind of the point, otherwise any of us could break Enigma. Glad it worked, though. I have to admit, I'm curious about this whole "curing cancer" business you think you've done...

      Delete