IMITATION GAME

Imitation what? Imitation Game. Alright, I’m not a gamer myself but I think this is gonna be a cool movie. I could imagine a casino where intelligent people sorting out large deck of cards on the table while a genius poker face played his cards gracefully with hidden tricks and an amateur begins imitating him and finally became a pro with the cards, beating the poker face guy completely. The end. However, it turned out to be nothing that I expected but in a good way. At beginning of the movie, I was sort of blur and slow catching up with the movie because this is not my type of movie and I have to watch it for the sake of assignment.

The movie is indeed vibrant and lively, which I could sum up into three categories: The way the Nazis outwit the rest of the world until Alan Turing came along and stop the war once and for all, how his brilliant invention (which is now the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed. 

Before that, I have no idea Alan was actually a homosexual until he named his machine Christopher, which was his late childhood friend back in high school. So what? Not everyone is perfect in life. However, back at that time, homosexual acts were a criminal offense. I understand and accept that Alan is surely one of a kind person which we rarely see every day. To me, Alan is not only a genius, but a hero who managed to cracked the Germany WW2 Enigma codes, thus shorten the war by 2 years, means save thousands of innocent lives. Alan’s invention has led to the existence of computer age and to what we have now such as television, tablet, ipad, mobile phones and the list goes on. The main point of this part was that this movie traced back to the origin of digital age which many of us and the future generation do not know about.

However, I was quite sad in the end where Alan committed suicide due to the burden of taking hormones and his suffering of loneliness. He is smart and he could have done better than that. Another thing that I was not happy about was everything about Alan was kept classified for 50 years despite being arrested for indecency and finally been officially pardoned of his offenses by Queen Elizabeth in 2013. It was unfair for Alan to be put in that kind of situation where he instead, should be awarded with a chest full of medals and recognition by the public.

Besides Alan Turing, I also like Joan Clark, the only ingenius female involved in the Enigma project. The part where Joan was allowed to partake the project after succeeded the candidate exam conducted by Alan potrayed women power since women are often looked down upon during that period, what more working alongside with a group of men. Despite being analytical, smart and generous, Joan was accepted warmly by Alan and the rest of the group mates as a team. Joan was understanding where both her and Alan often confided in one another as equals, despite knowing the truth about his secret.

Overall, the movie is complex and fascinating, engaged with ideas and present day implications (digital computers basically) where the scientific part is not too difficult to understand and the emotions of the actors and actress are clear and emphatic. With a rating of 7.5/10, I would surely recommend this movie to everyone.