When is a British film, albeit about a very British subject,
not a British film? Venturing an opinion I would say when its financed with
American money, directed by a Norwegian born director (Morten Tyldum best known
for his adaptation of Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters in 2011), the cinematography is handled by a Spanish DOP (Oscar
Faura), the screenplay is adapted by an American (Graham Moore) and the soundtrack
is by a French composer (Alexandra Desplat). But one must admit as far as I
know the actors are British! (These include Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira
Knightley, Matthew Goode and Mark Strong). Does it make much difference? Well
certainly not to the quality of the film. Although I’m not sure if this is the
story of Homosexuality, before the water shed that was 1967, or the story of an
attempt to save the British Empire. My candid suggestion would be to go and see
The
Imitation Game (2014) for yourselves and make your own mind up, but
either way I’m sure you will agree it’s a cracking film, from which ever of the
two-view point’s you choose to see it from.
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| The Team. |
Benedict Cumberbatch, who did nothing to enhance one of my
own personnel favourite characters in literature Mr Sherlock Holmes, gives an
award winning performance as Alan Turing the pioneering British computer
scientist and mathematician. The movie
covers Turing’s life back from 1952, when he was prosecuted under the archaic
act that governed sexual relationship’s between people of the same sex, essentially
back to the time when he worked for the Government Code and Cypher School at
Bletchley Park where he was credited in breaking German ciphers known as the
Enigma Code which it is said shortened WW2 in Europe by two to four years.
Although I believe the Soviets had a lot to do with that as well!
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| The Turing 'computer' that broke the German codes. |
The most sickening part of the Alan Turing story is how he
was basically forgotten, unrecognised for his work but persecuted for his
sexual orientation when, as I have said, he was prosecuted for homosexual acts
between consenting adults. Accepting chemical castration, as an alternative to
serving a prison sentence. The film intimates that this affected his brainpower
and therefore his continuing work. Two years after his sentence the forerunner
of the modern computer died mysteriously from cyanide poisoning. But the Turing
family had to wait until 2009 before an official public apology was made by the
then British Prime Minister Gordon ‘the Vow’ Brown and in 2013 the Queen of
England, the one whose son is alleged to have chased underage girls in America,
gave the scientist a posthumous pardon, which was very generous considering he
did not break any ‘real’ laws?
