Artistic Representation of a Turing Machine

Whatever else may divide opinion on this film (not having read any reviews) I am pretty sure most viewers and critics alike would have to agree that Benedict Cumberbatch holds it together with his excellent, quite mesmerizing performance.

It’s not quite sure if it’s meant to be a biopic about Turing or a ripping yarn wartime thriller, and I think the attempts to make it into the latter do a disservice to the former. Liberties are taken and there is a bit of a gallop at the end to gloss over some of the more unpleasant aspects of Turing’s life and death. I’m also never quite sure about the use of captions to tell the end of the story.

Another little niggle – there were a couple of bits of dialogue that made me wish someone old enough to talk without terminal rising inflections had proof-read the script. I’m pretty sure that ‘stellar’ would have jarred as used here, and the modern, redundant ‘even‘ would have stood out as anachronistic (e.g. what does that even mean?) in what otherwise is a conservatively handled script.

Niggles aside, I should say that three of us with very differing tastes and interests were all thoroughly engaged by the film. I think it tried to do too much and didn’t make it as a great film, which is a shame, but it is an entertaining film.