The Imitation Game.

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.

 

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!

 

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?

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Tom Clancy’s character of Jack Ryan has appeared in nine novels and now a total of five screen adaptations but the latest is not based on a novel but an original story, and even judged on its own merit does not reach the mark.  Sometimes complete nonsense can be fun like the Bourne franchise or even some of the Jason Statham or Liam Neeson action thrillers but Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2013) commits the greatest sin in the action genre: it was dull!  

 

The latest Jack Ryan.

Taken in by the American dream after 9/11, economics student Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) joins the US Marines and consequently gets blown out of the sky while invading Afghanistan narrowly avoiding being permanently paralysed. He is then recruited by the CIA in the form of a very dapper looking Kevin Costner and charged with going undercover on Wall Street and investigating suspected ‘anti American’ bank accounts. Ten years passes when his work eventually lead’s him to Russia (who you will notice from the media are the baddies again) where arch ‘comic book’ villain Kenneth Branagh, sporting a real dodgy Russian accent, is trying to bring down the American banking system. Obviously nobody told him that the Americans are quite capable of bring down their own financial institutions without the help of a foreign power! 

 

The latest Russian villain.

Branagh is not only responsible for one of the least believable villains on screen of late, but also the poor man is to be blamed for the films direction. Considering he has been acting since 1981 and directing since 1989 he should have ‘done a lot better’ as they used to say in school reports! Chris Pine, who is probably best known for his role as James T Kirk in the two new teenage reboots of Star Trek, is completely emotionless as Jack Ryan and gives the character no depth.  I hate to say this but Keira Knightley is also completely wasted as Ryan’s love interest.  To add to the misery the plot suffers from a muddled and unimaginative story line.

Anna Karenina

This is the third time Keira Knightley has collaborated with Joe Wright.

I would like to think that Joe Wright had seen Rita Azevedo Gomes artistic treat A Woman’s Revenge (A Vinganca de uma Mulher) 2011 before he made the latest adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s bittersweet love story Anna Karenina (2012). That was based on a 19^th century story adapted for the screen and it was also very theatrical, resembling a stage play with visuals that at times looked like work’s of art. Wrights third period drama after Pride and Prejudice in 2005 and Atonement in 2007,which also stared the beautiful photogenic Keira Knightley, also has a stage setting in a rather grand theatre where most of the film is based although unlike the Gomes film it feels that it could have included song and dance numbers! But credit to our London born film director he presents a familiar story in a completely different way, a trifle long winded but beautifully made and shot by Seamus McGarvey the DOP responsible for We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) and The Hours (2002) and many other very well known movies.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson play's a very unpleasant Count Vronsky

It must have been difficult even for a playwright of Tom Stoppard’s unique talents to produce a screenplay from a novel that apparently contained 950 pages. But he made a good job of transposing the obnoxious characters from the written page to the big screen. A story of upper-class tsarist society that become scandalised by the extra marital affair of a married women (a very well cast Keira Knightley) to a young Count Vronsky (a miss casted Aaron Taylor–Johnson) but are not scandalised by the death of the wheel tapper killed by a train on a busy railway station. To my mind it’s not surprising that within 40 years this privileged society was destroyed by the Russian Revolution an event that eventually lead to a Bolshevik government. 

A Dangerous Method.

Brendan Kearney, never a man to shirk his responsibilities, hosted Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre 

Film Club where he did a grand job of introducing A Dangerous Method (2011), not an easy film to summarise. He informed us it was about the turbulent relationship between the pioneering psychiatrists Carl Yung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and an attractive but troubled young Russian woman Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) who drives a wedge between these two men and who indecently became one of the first female psychoanalysts. Set in Switzerland and Austria in the early part of the twentieth century this fact-based drama was based on Christopher Hamptons play The Talking Cure, which in turn had been based on John Kerr’s non-fictional book A Most Dangerous Method. Brendan explained that this was a departure from the horror film genre that director David Cronenberg was best known for. Although I would reason that it’s not too dissimilar from his other works in the fact that most of them, like this one, explore the depths of the human mind.

Sabina Spielrein

The movie starts in 1904 with a hysterical Spielrein being restrained in a speeding coach and horses on her way to a mental hospital just outside Zurich to be subjected to the ‘talking cure’ under the care of Carl Yung. During her treatment Yung falls under her spell awakening hidden desires.  Influenced by Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel), another analyst who has been sent to Yung for treatment, the married Jung embarks on a sado-masochistic affair with Spielrein. It’s this affair that compromises Jung’s friendship with his eminent colleague Freud.

Carl Yung and Sigmund Freud.

This intellectually challenging award winning film has an exceptional period feel and so beautifully shoot you could almost smell the lake. With some first class acting and a touch of underlying humour its verbosity does not distract from your enjoyment of this fine film. I believe we have witnessed a cinematic landmark where the splendid Keira Knightley graduates from being a good British actress to being a great British actress. Nothing in this film is a coincidence!

Otto Gross.