Alan Turing: Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. but remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes... hollow.
It's not often that I compliment a film on its theatrical choices when attempting to adapt a (generally perceived) boring subject. My standard is that if one sacrifices the true essence of the technical elements, the challenges, the math, the fundamental forces that must be overcome by our heroes for the sake of a stupid audience, then the adapted script is a failure. In that, I would prefer subject matter expertise and in depth points motivations over easily digestible visuals. I understand this makes me a minority.
But, The Imitation Game succeeds where many many films fall flat. Yes, the story is ahistorical for the purposes of drive, emotion, conflict, simplicity, watchability, etc. (and if you are one of those people who delight in pointing out historical inaccuracies; I don't. Here is the wiki page with a complete section for all you completionists. It's a drama, feel free to watch a documentary or read.)
What I loved was the attention to the details that matter.
- Charles Dance plays perfectly the beuqacratic/military insistence on results, progress, order, time-tables, always always risk adverse. This has always been a critique of government, military, and business thinking in times of crisis. The Imitation Game never looses a moment to remind the audience that results are expected.
- That scene where they realize they can't tell anyone. What a horrifying position to be in where you know all, but if you tell or act like you do, everything changes? It changes every encounter from random interaction in the fog of war, to a known sacrifice.
- The characters breakdown of the scale. It's on the order of 150.7 trillion combinations to break ENIGMA. So...how would you solve it each day? As fast as possible? And it changes at 5am daily.
4.0 out of 5 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment