The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is a 2014 American

The Imitation Game
historical drama film directed by Morten Tyldum
and written by Graham Moore, based on the
biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew
Hodges. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch as
British cryptanalyst Alan Turing, who decrypted
German intelligence messages for the British
government during the Second World War. Keira
Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear,
Charles Dance, and Mark Strong also star.

The screenplay topped the annual Black List for

best unproduced Hollywood scripts in 2011. The
Weinstein Company acquired the film for $7
million in February 2014, the highest amount
ever paid for U.S. distribution rights at the
European Film Market. It was released
theatrically in the United States on 28 November
2014.
Theatrical release poster
The Imitation Game grossed over $233 million Directed by Morten Tyldum
worldwide on a $14 million production budget,
Produced by Nora Grossman
making it the highest-grossing independent film
of 2014. It received eight nominations at the Ido Ostrowsky
87th Academy Awards, winning for Best Adapted Teddy Schwarzman
Screenplay, five nominations in the 72nd Golden
Written by Graham Moore
Globe Awards, and three nominations at the 21st
Screen Actors Guild Awards. It also received nine Based on Alan Turing: The
BAFTA nominations and won the People's Enigma
Choice Award at the 39th Toronto International by Andrew Hodges
Film Festival. Starring Benedict
Cumberbatch
Keira Knightley

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 The film was criticised by some for its inaccurate Matthew Goode
portrayal of historical events and for Rory Kinnear
downplaying Turing's homosexuality. However,
Charles Dance
the LGBT civil rights advocacy organisation the
Human Rights Campaign honoured it for Mark Strong
bringing Turing's legacy to a wider audience. Music by Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography Óscar Faura
Edited by William Goldenberg
Contents Production Black Bear Pictures
Plot companies
Bristol Automotive
Cast Orange Corp
Production Distributed by The Weinstein
Music Company
Release Release date August 29, 2014
Marketing (Telluride Film
Theatrical release Festival)
Home media November 28, 2014
(United States)
Reception
Box office Running time 114 minutes[1]
Critical response Country United States[2][3]
The Turing family Language English
Social action Budget $14 million[4]
Controversy Box office $233.6 million[5]
Historical inaccuracies
Historical events
Turing's personality and personal life
Personalities and actions of other
characters
Accolades
References
External links

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 Plot
In 1951, two policemen, Nock and Staehl, investigate the mathematician Alan Turing after an
apparent break-in at his home. During his interrogation by Nock, Turing tells of his time
working at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

In 1928, the young Turing is unhappy and bullied at boarding school. He develops a
friendship with Christopher Morcom, who sparks his interest in cryptography. Turing
develops romantic feelings for him, but Christopher soon dies from tuberculosis.

When Britain declares war on Germany in 1939, Turing travels to Bletchley Park. Under the
direction of Commander Alastair Denniston, he joins the cryptography team of Hugh
Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton, Keith Furman and Charles Richards. The team are
trying to analyze the Enigma machine, which the Nazis use to send coded messages.

Turing is difficult to work with, and considers his colleagues inferior; he works alone to
design a machine to decipher Enigma messages. After Denniston refuses to fund
construction of the machine, Turing writes to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who puts
Turing in charge of the team and funds the machine. Turing fires Furman and Richards and
places a difficult crossword in newspapers to find replacements. Joan Clarke, a Cambridge
graduate, passes Turing’s test but her parents will not allow her to work with the male
cryptographers. Turing arranges for her to live and work with the female clerks who
intercept the messages, and shares his plans with her. With Clarke's help, Turing warms to
the other colleagues, who begin to respect him.

Turing’s machine, which he names Christopher, is constructed, but cannot determine the
Enigma encryption settings quickly enough; the Germans reset them each day. Denniston
orders it to be destroyed and Turing fired, but the other cryptographers threaten to leave if
Turing goes. After Clarke plans to leave on the wishes of her parents, Turing proposes
marriage, which she accepts. During their reception, Turing confirms his homosexuality to
Cairncross, who warns him to keep it secret. After overhearing a conversation with a female
clerk about messages she receives, Turing has an epiphany, realising he can program the
machine to decode words he already knows exist in certain messages. After he recalibrates
the machine, it quickly decodes a message and the cryptographers celebrate. Turing realises
they cannot act on every decoded message or the Germans will realise Enigma has been
broken.

Turing discovers that Cairncross is a Soviet spy. When Turing confronts him, Cairncross
argues that the Soviets are allies working for the same goals, and threatens to retaliate by
disclosing Turing’s sexuality. When the MI6 agent Stewart Menzies appears to threaten

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 Clarke, Turing reveals that Cairncross is a spy. Menzies reveals he knew this already and
planted Cairncross to leak messages to the Soviets for British benefit. Fearing for her safety,
Turing tells Clarke to leave Bletchley Park, revealing that he is gay. Clarke states she always
suspected but insists they would have been happy together anyway. Turing then tells her he
never cared for her, and only used her for her cryptography skills. Heartbroken, she decides
to stay anyway, deeming this the single most important task she'll undertake, and she now
refuses to cow to what Turing or her parents want her to do, or think of her decisions. After
the war, Menzies tells the cryptographers to destroy their work and that they can never see
one another again or share what they have done.

In the 1950s, Turing is convicted of gross indecency and, in lieu of a jail sentence, undergoes
chemical castration so he can continue his work. Clarke visits him in his home and witnesses
his physical and mental deterioration. She comforts him by saying that his work saved
millions of lives. The final scene shows an on screen message saying, "After a year of
government-mandated hormonal therapy, Turing committed suicide on June 7th, 1954. He
was 41 years old. Between 1885 and 1967, approximately 49,000 homosexual men were
convicted of gross indecency under British law. In 2013 Queen Elizabeth II granted Turing a
posthumous Royal Pardon, honouring his unprecedented achievements."

Cast
Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing
Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke[6]
Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander[7]
Rory Kinnear as Detective Nock[8]
Allen Leech as John Cairncross[9]
Matthew Beard as Peter Hilton[10]
Charles Dance as Cdr. Alastair Denniston
Mark Strong as Maj. Gen. Stewart Menzies[11]
James Northcote as Jack Good
Tom Goodman-Hill as Sergeant Staehl
Steven Waddington as Superintendent Smith
Ilan Goodman as Keith Furman
Jack Tarlton as Charles Richards
Alex Lawther as young Alan Turing
Jack Bannon as Christopher Morcom
Tuppence Middleton as Helen Stewart

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 Tuppence Middleton as Helen Stewart
Dominic Charman as Sherborne Student 1
James G. Nunn as Sherborne Student 2
Charlie Manton as Sherborne Student 3
David Charkham as Joan's Father, William Kemp Lowther Clarke
Victoria Wicks as Joan's Mother, Dorothy Clarke
Andrew Havill as Sherborne Teacher
Laurence Kennedy as Sherborne Headmaster
Miranda Bell as Margaret

Production
Before Cumberbatch joined the project, Warner Bros. bought the screenplay for a reported
seven-figure sum because of Leonardo DiCaprio's interest in playing
Turing. [12][13][14][15][16] In the end, DiCaprio did not come on board and the rights of the
script reverted to the screenwriter. Black Bear Pictures subsequently committed to finance
the film for $14 million.[4][17][18] Various directors were attached during development
including Ron Howard and David Yates.[19] In December 2012, it was announced that
Headhunters director Morten Tyldum would helm the project, making the film his English-
language directorial debut.[20][21]

Principal photography began on 15 September 2013 in

Britain. Filming locations included Turing's former
school, Sherborne, Bletchley Park, where Turing and his
colleagues worked during the war, and Central Saint
Martins campus on Southampton Row in London.[22]
Other locations included towns in England such as
Nettlebed (Joyce Grove in Oxfordshire) and Chesham
(Buckinghamshire). Scenes were also filmed at Bicester
Airfield and outside the Law Society building in
Bletchley Park, "the home of
Chancery Lane, and at West London Film Studios.
the codebreakers" where
Principal photography finished on 11 November
parts of the film were shot
2013.[23]

The bombe seen in the film is based on a replica of

Turing's original machine, which is housed in the museum at Bletchley Park. However,
production designer Maria Djurkovic admitted that her team made the machine more
cinematic by making it larger and having more of its internal mechanisms visible.[24]

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 The film's title refers to Turing's proposed test of the same name, which he discussed in his
1950 paper on artificial intelligence entitled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence".[25]

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.[26] The film is
also a recipient of Tribeca Film Festival's Sloan Filmmaker Fund, which grants filmmakers
funding and guidance with regard to innovative films that are concerned with science,
mathematics, and technology.[27]

Music
In June 2014, it was announced that Alexandre Desplat
The Imitation Game
would provide the original score of the film.[28] It was
recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Film score by Alexandre
Desplat
Road Studios in London.[29] Desplat uses continuous
piano arpeggios to represent both Turing's thinking Released 24 November 2014
mind and the workings of a mechanical machine.[29] He Genre Soundtrack
said of the complexity of the continuity and structure of Length 51:08
the score:
Label Sony Music
Entertainment
[W]hen the camera at the end of the film has
those beautiful shots of the young boy, the
young Alan, and he's meeting with the
professor who's telling him his friend
Christopher is dead, and the camera is
pushing in on him, I play Christopher's
theme that we heard very early on in the
film. There's a simple continuity there. It's
the accumulation of these moments that I
can slowly but surely play that make it even
stronger.[29]

The score received an Academy Award nomination for Best

Original Score, losing to the score of The Grand Budapest Desplat composed the
Hotel, also composed by Desplat. film's score in under
three weeks
No. Title Length
1. "The Imitation Game" 2:37

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 2. "Enigma" 2:50
3. "Alan" 2:57
4. "U-boats" 2:12
5. "Carrots and Peas" 2:19
6. "Mission" 1:36
7. "Crosswords" 2:52
8. "Night Research" 1:39
9. "Joan" 1:45
10. "Alone with Numbers" 2:58
11. "The Machine Christopher" 1:57
12. "Running" 3:01
13. "The Headmaster" 2:27
14. "Decrypting" 2:01
15. "A Different Equation" 2:54
16. "Becoming a Spy" 4:08
17. "The Apple" 2:20
18. "Farewell to Christopher" 2:41
19. "End of War" 2:07
20. "Because of You" 1:36
21. "Alan Turing's Legacy" 1:56

Release

Marketing
Following the Royal Pardon granted by the British government to Turing on 24 December
2013, the filmmakers released the first official promotional photograph of Cumberbatch in
character beside Turing's bombe.[30][31] In the week of the anniversary of Turing's death in
June 2014, Entertainment Weekly released two new stills which marked the first look at the
characters played by Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Matthew Beard, and Allen Leech.[32]
On what would have been Turing's 102nd birthday on 23 June, Empire released two
photographs featuring Mark Strong and Charles Dance in character. Promotional stills were
taken by photographer Jack English, who also photographed Cumberbatch for Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy.[33]

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 Princeton University Press and Vintage Books both released film tie-in editions of Andrew
Hodges' biography Alan Turing: The Enigma in September 2014.[34] The first UK and US
trailers were released on 22 July 2014.[35] The international teaser poster was released on
18 September 2014 with the tagline "The true enigma was the man who cracked the
code".[36]

In November 2014, the Weinstein Company co-hosted a private screening of the film with
Digital Sky Technologies billionaire Yuri Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Attendees of the screening at Los Altos Hills, California included Silicon Valley's top
executives, such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Linkedin's Reid Hoffman, Google co-
founder Sergey Brin, Airbnb's Nathan Blecharczyk, and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
Director Tyldum, screenwriter Moore, and actress Knightley were also in attendance.[37] In
addition, Cumberbatch and Zuckerberg presented the Mathematics Prizes at the
Breakthrough Awards on 10 November 2014 in honour of Turing.[38]

The bombe re-created by the filmmakers has been on display in a special The Imitation
Game exhibition at Bletchley Park since 10 November 2014. The year-long exhibit features
clothes worn by the actors and props used in the film.[39]

The official film website allowed visitors to unlock exclusive content by solving cryptic
crossword puzzles supposedly conceived by Turing.[40] The website puzzle was a shorter
version[41] of the Daily Telegraph puzzle of 13 January 1942 that was actually used in
Bletchley Park recruitment during the war[42] (and the puzzle was not set by Turing, who
was no good at them).[41] Google, which sponsored the New York Premiere of the film,
launched a competition called "The Code-Cracking Challenge" on 23 November 2014. It is a
skill contest where entrants must crack a code provided by Google. The prize/s will be
awarded to entrant/s who crack the code and submit their entry the fastest.[43]

In November 2014, ahead of the film's US release, The New York Times reprinted the 1942
puzzle from The Daily Telegraph used in recruiting codebreakers at Bletchley Park during
the Second World War. Entrants who solved the puzzle could mail in their results for a
chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of Bletchley Park.[44]

TWC launched a print and online campaign on 2 January 2015 featuring testimonials from
leaders in the fields of technology, military, academia, and LGBTQ groups (all influenced by
Turing's life and accomplishments) to promote the film and Turing's legacy. Yahoo! CEO
Marissa Mayer, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt,
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki,
and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales all gave tribute quotes. There were also testimonials from

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 LGBT leaders including HRC president Chad Griffin and GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis and
from military leaders including the 22nd United States Defense Secretary Robert
Gates.[45][46][47][48]

Theatrical release
The film had its world premiere at the 41st Telluride Film Festival in August 2014, and
played at the 39th Toronto International Film Festival in September.[49] It had its European
premiere as the opening film of the 58th BFI London Film Festival in October 2014.[50][51]
It had a limited theatrical release on 28 November 2014 in the United States, two weeks after
its premiere in the United Kingdom on 14 November.[13] The US distributor TWC stated
that the film would initially debut in four cinemas in Los Angeles and New York, expanding
to six new markets on 12 December before being released nationwide on Christmas Day.[52]

Home media
The Imitation Game was released on 31 March 2015 in the United States in two formats: a
one-disc standard DVD and a Blu-ray with a digital copy of the film.[53]

Reception

Box office
The Imitation Game grossed $91.1 million in North America and $142.4 million in other
territories for a worldwide total of $233.5 million, against a budget of $14 million.[5] It was
the top-grossing independent film release of 2014.[54]

The film opened at number two at the UK box office behind the big-budget film Interstellar,
earning $4.3 million from 459 screens. Its opening box office figure was the third highest
opening weekend haul for a British film in 2014. Its opening was 107% higher than that of
Argo, 81% higher than Philomena and 26% higher than The Iron Lady following its
debut.[55][56]

Debuting in four cinemas in Los Angeles and New York on 28 November, the film grossed
$479,352 in its opening weekend with a $119,352 per-screen-average, the second highest
per-screen-average of 2014 and the 7th highest of all time for a live-action film. Adjusted for
inflation, it outperformed the Weinstein Company's own Oscar-winning films The King's

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 Speech ($88,863 in 2010) and The Artist ($51,220 in 2011), which were also released on
Thanksgiving weekend. The film expanded into additional markets on 12 December and was
released nationwide on Christmas Day.[57][58][59]

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a "Certified Fresh" approval
rating of 89% based on 274 reviews, with an average rating of
7.72/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With an
outstanding starring performance from Benedict Cumberbatch
illuminating its fact-based story, The Imitation Game serves as
an eminently well-made entry in the 'prestige biopic'
genre."[60] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average
score of 73 out of 100, based on 49 critics, indicating "generally
favorable reviews".[61] The film received a rare average grade of
"A+" from market-research firm CinemaScore, and a 90%
"definite recommend" rating from its core audience, according
to comScore. It was also included in both the National Board of
Review and American Film Institute's "Top 10 Films of Cumberbatch at the
2014".[62][63][64] premiere of the film at
TIFF, September 2014
The New York Observer's Rex Reed declared that "one of the
most important stories of the last century is one of the greatest
movies of 2014".[65] Kaleem Aftab of The Independent gave the film a five-star review,
hailing it the "Best British Film of the Year".[66][67] Lou Lumenick of the New York Post
described it as a "thoroughly engrossing Oscar-caliber movie", while critic James Rocchi
added that the film is "strong, stirring, triumphant and tragic".[68] Empire described it as a
"superb thriller" and Glamour declared it "an instant classic".[69][70] Peter Debruge of
Variety added that the film is "beautifully written, elegantly mounted and poignantly
performed".[71] Critic Scott Foundas stated that the "movie is undeniably strong in its sense
of a bright light burned out too soon, and the often undignified fate of those who dare to
chafe at society's established norms".[72] Critic Leonard Maltin asserted that the film has
"an ideal ensemble cast with every role filled to perfection". Praise went to Knightley's
supporting performance as Clarke, Goldenberg's editing, Desplat's score, Faura's
cinematography and Djurkovic's production design.[73] The film was enthusiastically
received at the Telluride Film Festival and won the "People's Choice Award for Best Film" at
TIFF, the highest prize of the festival.

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 Cumberbatch's performance was met with widespread
acclaim from critics. TIME ranked Cumberbatch's
portrayal number one in its Top 10 film performances of
2014, with the magazine's chief film critic Richard
Corliss calling Cumberbatch's characterisation "the
actor's oddest, fullest, most Cumberbatchian character
yet ... he doesn't play Turing so much as inhabit him,
bravely and sympathetically but without
mediation".[74][75] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles
Cumberbatch signing
Times declared Turing "the role of Cumberbatch's
autographs at the Toronto
career", while A.O. Scott of The New York Times stated
International Film Festival, that it is "one of the year's finest pieces of screen
September 2014 acting".[76][77] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone asserted
that the actor "gives an explosive, emotionally complex"
portrayal. Critic Clayton Davis stated that it's a "performance for the ages ... proving he's one
of the best actors working today".[78][79] Foundas of Variety wrote that Cumberbatch's
acting is "masterful ... a marvel to watch", Manohla Dargis of The New York Times described
it as "delicately nuanced, prickly and tragic" and Owen Gleiberman of the BBC proclaimed it
an "emotionally tailored perfection".[80][81] It's "a storming performance from
Cumberbatch: you'll be deciphering his work long after the credits roll" declared Dave
Calhoun of Time Out.[82] In addition, Claudia Puig of USA Today concluded in her review,
"It's Cumberbatch's nuanced, haunted performance that leaves the most powerful
impression".[83] The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy reported that the undeniable
highlight of the film was Cumberbatch, "whose charisma, tellingly modulated and
naturalistic array of eccentricities, talent at indicating a mind never at rest and knack for
simultaneously portraying physical oddness and attractiveness combine to create an entirely
credible portrait of genius at work".[84][85] Critic Roger Friedman wrote at the end of his
review, "Cumberbatch may be the closest thing we have to a real descendant of Sir Laurence
Olivier".[86]

While praising the performances of Cumberbatch and Knightley, Catherine Shoard of The
Guardian stated that the film is "too formulaic, too efficient at simply whisking you through
and making sure you've clocked the diversity message".[87] Tim Robey of The Telegraph
described it as "a film about a human calculator which feels ... a little too calculated".[88]
Some critics also raised concerns about film's alleged reluctance to highlight Turing's
homosexuality.[89] British historian Alex von Tunzelmann, writing for The Guardian in
November 2014, pointed out many historical inaccuracies in the film, saying in conclusion:
"Historically, The Imitation Game is as much of a garbled mess as a heap of unbroken

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 code".[90] Journalist Christian Caryl also found numerous historical inaccuracies, describing
the film as constituting "a bizarre departure from the historical record" that changed
Turing's rich life to be "multiplex-friendly".[91] L.V. Anderson of Slate magazine compared
the film's account of Turing's life and work to the biography it was based on, writing, "I
discovered that The Imitation Game takes major liberties with its source material, injecting
conflict where none existed, inventing entirely fictional characters, rearranging the
chronology of events, and misrepresenting the very nature of Turing's work at Bletchley
Park".[92] Andrew Grant of Science News wrote, "... like so many other Hollywood biopics, it
takes some major artistic license – which is disappointing, because Turing's actual story is so
compelling."[93] Computing historian Thomas Haigh, writing in the journal
Communications of the ACM, said that "the film is a bad guide to reality but a useful
summary of everything that the popular imagination gets wrong about Bletchley Park", that
it "combines the traditional focus of popular science writing on the lone genius who changes
the world with the modern movie superhero narrative of a freak who must overcome his own
flaws before he can save the world", and that, together with the likes of A Beautiful Mind and
The Theory of Everything, is part of a trend of "glossy scientific biopic[s]" that emphasize
those famous scientists who were surrounded by tragedy rather than those who found
contented lives, which in turn affects the way "[s]ome kinds of people, and work, have
become famous and others have not."[94]

The Turing family

Despite earlier reservations, Turing's niece Inagh Payne told Allan Beswick of BBC Radio
Manchester that the film "really did honour my uncle" after she watched the film at the
London Film Festival in October 2014. In the same interview, Turing's nephew Dermot
Turing stated that Cumberbatch is "perfect casting. I couldn't think of anyone better." James
Turing, a great-nephew of the code-breaker, said Cumberbatch "knows things that I never
knew before. The amount of knowledge he has about Alan is amazing."[95]

Social action
In January 2015, Cumberbatch, comedian-actor 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. An open letter
published in The Guardian urged the British government and the Royal family, particularly
Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, to aid the campaign.[96]

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 The Human Rights Campaign's Chad Griffin also offered his endorsement, saying: "Over
49,000 other gay men and women were persecuted in England under the same law. Turing
was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II in 2013. The others were not. Honor this movie. Honor
this man. And honor the movement to bring justice to the other 49,000."[97] Aiding the
cause were campaigner Peter Tatchell, Attitude magazine, and other high-profile figures in
the gay community.[98]

In February 2015, Matt Damon, Michael Douglas, Jessica Alba, Bryan Cranston, and Anna
Wintour among others joined the petition at Pardon49k.org (https://www.change.org/p/bri
tish-government-pardon-all-of-the-estimated-49-000-men-who-like-alan-turing-were-conv
icted-of-consenting-same-sex-relations-under-the-british-gross-indecency-law-only-repeale
d-in-2003-and-also-all-the-other-men-convicted-under-other-uk-anti-gay-la?just_created=
true#__utma=149406063.1868581297.1422318822.1422318822.1422396603.2&__utmb=1
49406063.1.10.1422396603&__utmc=149406063&__utmx=-&__utmz=149406063.14223
96603.2.2.utmcsr=t.co%7Cutmccn=(referral)%7Cutmcmd=referral%7Cutmcct=/HiJ8hBaO
Jf&__utmv=-&__utmk=263690892) demanding pardons for victims of anti-gay
laws.[99][100] Historians, including Justin Bengry of Birkbeck University of London and
Matt Houlbrook of the University of Birmingham, argued that such a pardon would be "bad
history" despite its political appeal, because of the broad variety of cases in which the
historical laws were applied (including cases of rape) and the distortion of history resulting
from an attempt to clean up the wrongdoings of the past post facto. Bengry also cites the
existing ability of those convicted under repealed anti-homosexuality laws to have their
convictions declared spent.[101]

This petition eventually resulted in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, informally known as the
Alan Turing law, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were cautioned or
convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts, and which was
implemented on 31 January 2017.[102] As the law and the disregard process applies only to
England and Wales, groups in Northern Ireland and Scotland have campaigned for
equivalent laws in their jurisdictions.[103][104]

Controversy
During production, there was criticism regarding the film's purported downplaying of
Turing's homosexuality,[105] particularly condemning the portrayal of his relationship with
close friend and one-time fiancée Joan Clarke. Hodges, author of the book upon which the
film was based, described the script as having "built up the relationship with Joan much
more than it actually was".[106] Turing's niece Payne thought that Knightley was

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 inappropriately cast, as she described the real Clarke as "rather plain", and said: "I think
they might be trying to romanticise it. It makes me a bit mad. You want the film to show it as
it was, not a lot of nonsense."[107]

Speaking to Empire, director Tyldum expressed his decision to take on the project: "It is
such a complex story. It was the gay rights element, but also how his (Turing's) ideas were
kept secret and how incredibly important his work was
during the war, that he was never given credit for it".[33]
In an interview for GQ UK, Matthew Goode, who plays
fellow cryptographer Hugh Alexander in the film, stated
that the script focuses on "Turing's life and how as a
nation we celebrated him as being a hero by chemically
castrating him because he was gay".[108] The producers
of the film stated: "There is not – and never has been – a
version of our script where Alan Turing is anything
other than homosexual, nor have we included fictitious
sex scenes."[109]

In a January 2015 interview with The Huffington Post,

its screenwriter Graham Moore said in response to
complaints about the film's historical accuracy:
Knightley portrayed code
When you use the language of "fact breaker Joan Clarke
checking" to talk about a film, I think you're
sort of fundamentally misunderstanding
how art works. You don't fact check Monet's
Water Lilies. That's not what water lilies
look like, that's what the sensation of
experiencing water lilies feel like. That's the
goal of the piece.[110]

In the same interview, Tyldum stated:

A lot of historical films sometimes feel like people reading a Wikipedia page to
you onscreen, like just reciting "and then he did that, and then he did that, and
then he did this other thing" – it's like a "Greatest Hits" compilation. We wanted
the movie to be emotional and passionate. Our goal was to give you "What does

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 Alan Turing feel like?" What does his story feel like? What'd it feel like to be Alan
Turing? Can we create the experience of sort of "Alan Turing-ness" for an
audience based on his life?[110]

For the most part, Hodges has not commented on the historical accuracy of the film, alluding
to contractual obligations involving the film rights to his biography.[111]

Historical inaccuracies
Several events depicted in the film did not happen in real life. The visual blog Information is
Beautiful deduced that, while taking creative licence into account, the film was just 42.3%
accurate when compared to real-life events, summarizing that "shoe-horning the incredible
complexity of the Enigma machine and cryptography in general was never going to be easy.
But this film just rips the historical records to shreds".[112]

Historical events
The naming of the Enigma-breaking machine "Christopher" after Turing's childhood
friend, with Turing the only cryptographer working on it while others either did not help or
outright opposed it.

In reality, this electromechanical machine was called "Victory" and it was a

collaborative, not individual, effort. It was a British Bombe machine, which was
partly inspired by a design by the Polish cryptanalyst Marian Rejewski. Rejewski
designed a machine in 1938, called bomba kryptologiczna, which had broken an
earlier version of Germany's Enigma machines by the Polish Cipher Bureau before
the Second World War.[113]
A new machine with a different strategy was designed by Turing in 1940 with a
major contribution from mathematician Gordon Welchman, who goes unmentioned
in the film, his contribution instead attributed to Hugh Alexander.[92]

The building of only one machine, with Turing playing a large role in its construction.

More than 200 British Bombes were built under the supervision of chief engineer
Harold Keen of the British Tabulating Machine Company. None of them were built
at Bletchley Park.[94]

The overall plot arc in which the British cryptographers were stymied for the first few

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 years of the war and then a sudden breakthrough enabled them to finally break Enigma.

In reality, the Polish cryptanalysts Marian

Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk
Zygalski from the Polish Cipher Bureau
had been breaking German Enigma
messages since 1932. Their effort allowed
the Poles to build replicas of German
machines in Warsaw for the Polish secret
service. Just before the war, the Polish
secret service revealed their work to their
French and British allies in a secret
meeting on 26 and 27 July 1939,[114] in
Pyry near Warsaw. Thousands of men and
women were working on the project by the
time the war ended in 1945. The
computing advances did not obviate the
need for human labour, as the many
teams of largely female operators certainly
knew. Throughout the war, there were
breakthroughs and setbacks when the
design or use of the German Enigma
machines was changed and the Bletchley Turing's rebuilt bombe machine,
Park code breakers had to adapt.[91][94] called Christopher in the film, on
Moreover, the breakthrough depicted in display at Bletchley Park Museum
the film gives the impression that the
Bombe was developed first, and only
became effective later, after it was realised that deciphering could be made easier
by looking for known or speculated items contained in an intercepted message, a
practice known in cryptanalysis as employing a crib. In reality, the opposite was
true: the use of cribs was the central attack model upon which the Bombe's
principal design was based, rather than being an afterthought to the design.

The suggestion that Enigma was the only German cipher broken at Bletchley Park.

The breaking of the Lorenz cipher, codenamed "Tunny", arguably made just as
important a contribution to Ultra intelligence as the breaking of Enigma, and
breaking Tunny was in many ways more difficult. Neither the Tunny effort nor its
main contributors, mathematician W. T. "Bill" Tutte and electrical engineer Tommy
Flowers, are mentioned in the film. The Colossus computer they built goes

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 unmentioned by name in the film, although there is an implicit suggestion that
Turing was responsible for it, which he was not.[94]

The scene where the Hut 8 team decides not to use broken codes to stop a German raid
on a convoy that the brother of one of the code breakers (Peter Hilton) is serving on, to
hide the fact they have broken the code.

In reality, Hilton had no such brother, and decisions about when and whether to
use data from Ultra intelligence were made at much higher administrative
levels.[92]

The sequence in which Turing writes a letter to Churchill to gain control over the project
and obtain funding for the decryption machine.

Turing was actually not alone in making a different request with a number of
colleagues, including Hugh Alexander, writing a letter to Churchill (who had earlier
visited there) in an effort to have more administrative resources sent to Bletchley
Park, which Churchill immediately did.[92]

The recruitment of Joan Clarke as a result of an examination after solving a crossword

puzzle in a newspaper.

In reality, Joan Clarke was recruited by her former academic supervisor, Gordon
Welchman, to the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS).[92] Puzzles
were used by Bletchley Park in recruitment but neither Turing nor Clarke were ever
involved with them.[41]

Turing's personality and personal life

The presentation of Turing's social difficulties as so severe as to suggest Asperger
syndrome or some form of autism.

While a few writers and researchers have tried to assign such a retrospective
diagnosis to Turing,[115] and it is true that he had his share of eccentricities, the
Asperger's-like traits portrayed in the film – social awkwardness, difficulty
working co-operatively with others, and tendency to take things too literally –
bear little relationship to the actual adult Turing. Despite enjoying working alone,
Turing was sociable and had friends, was also viewed as having a sense of
humour, and had good working relationships with colleagues.[91][116][117][94]

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 The scenes depicting Turing's childhood friend, including the manner in which Turing
learned of Morcom's illness and death.[90][92]
The sequence, which brackets the whole film, in which Turing is arrested in 1951 when a
detective suspects him of being a Soviet spy, which leads to the discovery that Turing is
gay.

Turing's arrest was in 1952. The detective in the film and the interview as portrayed
are fictional. Turing was investigated for his homosexuality after a robbery at his
house and was never investigated for espionage.[90]

The suggestion that chemical castration made Turing unable to think clearly or do any
work.

Despite physical weakness and changes in Turing's body including gynaecomastia,

at that time he was doing innovative work on mathematical biology, inspired by the
very changes his body was undergoing due to chemical castration. While the
physical changes distressed Turing, his friends did not notice any meaningful
changes to his disposition or comportment in the period between the beginning of
his castration and his death.[91][92]

The scene in which Clarke visits Turing in his home while he is serving probation.

There is no record of Clarke ever visiting Turing's residence during his probation,
although Turing did stay in touch with her after the war and informed her of his
forthcoming trial for indecency.[92]

The statement that Turing committed suicide after a year of hormone treatment.

In reality, the nature of Turing's death is a matter of considerable debate. The

chemical castration period ended 14 months before his death. The official inquest
into his death ruled that he had committed suicide by consuming a cyanide-laced
apple. Turing biographer Andrew Hodges believes the death was indeed a suicide,
re-enacting the poisoned apple from Snow White, Turing's favourite fairy tale, with
some deliberate ambiguity included to permit Turing's mother to interpret it as an
accident. However, Jack Copeland, an editor of volumes of Turing's work and
Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, has suggested that
Turing's death may have been accidental, caused by the cyanide fumes produced
by an experiment in his spare room, and that the investigation was poorly
conducted.[92][118]

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 Personalities and actions of other characters
The depiction of Commander Denniston as a rigid officer, bound by military thinking and
eager to shut down the decryption machine when it fails to deliver results.

Denniston's grandchildren stated that the film takes an "unwarranted sideswipe" at

their grandfather's memory, showing him to be a "baddy" and a "hectoring
character" who hinders the work of Turing. They said their grandfather had a
completely different temperament from the one portrayed in the film and was
entirely supportive of the work done by cryptographers under his
command.[92][119] There is no record of the film's depicted interactions between
Turing and Denniston. Indeed, before the war, Denniston recruited lecturers at
Oxford and Cambridge, and Turing, Welchman, and others began working part-
time for him then.[120]:9 Turing was always respected and considered one of the
best code-breakers at Bletchley Park[92] and in short order took on the role of a
leader there.[94]

All the interactions between Turing and Stewart Menzies, head of the British Secret
Intelligence Service.

There are no records showing that they interacted at all during Turing's time at
Bletchley Park.[92]

An espionage subplot involving Turing and Soviet spy John Cairncross.

Turing and Cairncross worked in different areas of Bletchley Park and there is no
evidence they ever met.[91][92] Alex Von Tunzelmann was angered by this subplot
(which suggests that Turing was for a while blackmailed into not revealing
Cairncross as a spy lest his homosexuality be revealed), writing that "creative
licence is one thing, but slandering a great man's reputation – while buying into the
nasty 1950s prejudice that gay men automatically constituted a security risk – is
quite another."[90]

Hugh Alexander is said to have won the British Chess Championship twice near the
beginning of the film. Although this is true, he won it once in 1938 and the second time
only in 1956, after the war.

Accolades

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 The Imitation Game was nominated for, and received, numerous awards, with
Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing particularly praised.[121][122][123][124] The film and its
cast and crew were also honoured by Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT civil rights
advocacy group and political lobbying organisation in the United States. "We are proud to
honor the stars and filmmakers of The Imitation Game for bringing the captivating yet tragic
story of Alan Turing to the big screen", HRC president Chad Griffin said in a statement.[125]

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External links
The Imitation Game (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/) on IMDb
The Imitation Game (https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_imitation_game) at Rotten
Tomatoes
The Imitation Game (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-imitation-game) at Metacritic
The Imitation Game (https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=imitationgame.htm) at
Box Office Mojo

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