The Imitation Game (2014) on Netflix
PG-1320141h 54mBiographyDramaThriller
In 1939, Alan Turing joins Britain's code-breakers at Bletchley Park and builds a machine to crack the German Enigma cipher. Commander Denniston refuses funding, and the code resets nightly.
- Netflix4.4/5
- IMDb8.0/10885,437 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Britain enters the war in 1939, and Alan Turing, a Cambridge mathematician, arrives at Bletchley Park to join the government's code-breaking team. The Germans send military orders through Enigma, a cipher machine whose settings change every midnight, so the code-breakers start again each morning. Turing believes only a machine can beat a machine and designs one he calls Christopher, asking for a hundred thousand pounds. Commander Denniston refuses to pay, and the other cryptographers, Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross and Peter Hilton among them, find Turing cold and difficult. A crossword puzzle in the newspapers brings in Joan Clarke, who solves the test faster than Turing did and joins the team under the cover of clerical work.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Imitation Game (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- A petition led to the Policing and Crime Act 2017, informally known as the Alan Turing law, an amnesty pardoning men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts, implemented on January 31, 2017.
- In January 2015, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Fry, producer Harvey Weinstein and Turing's great-niece Rachel Barnes launched a campaign to pardon the 49,000 gay men convicted under the same law that led to Turing's chemical castration, asking the government and Royal family to help.
- Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing Turing, but DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the script reverted to the screenwriter.
- The Weinstein Company acquired the film for $7 million in February 2014, the highest amount ever paid for US distribution rights at the European Film Market.
- The bombe in the film is based on a replica of Turing's original machine housed in the Bletchley Park museum, but production designer Maria Djurkovic's team made it larger and exposed more of its internal mechanisms to make it more cinematic.
- During production the film was criticized for downplaying Turing's homosexuality, especially his relationship with Joan Clarke; biographer Hodges, author of the book it was based on, said the script built up the Joan relationship far beyond what it was.
