Sure, you can watch The Imitation Game (2014) as a World War II drama.  Of course, without the backdrop of the war, the name Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) might not be recognizable at all.  As it is, we have only learned of his enormous contribution to defeating Nazi Germany decades after he led the team the deciphered the code of their supposedly unbreakable Enigma machine.  In other words, like the German message system to which he is linked, he did not live up to its namesake forever.  This is all well and good, but it is not the point of the film.  Indeed, much of what is to be understood about it can be gleaned from the title.  Forgive me if I am seeming to be obtuse, but it is fitting and somewhat of the point.  Read on to learn the rest.

I will have to skip ahead in the order in which The Imitation Game is told to help you make sense of it.  Rather than during World War II, or the lead up to it, we begin in 1951.  There has been a break-in at the home of Alan Turing, Cambridge mathematics professor.  The fact that nothing was stolen deepens the mystery, as does Alan’s dismissiveness of the incident.  This does not deter Detective Robert Nock (Rory Kinnear) from pressing forward with an investigation.  He turns up a number of irregularities.  The first is that the record of Alan’s service during the war is empty.  This is partially connected to the nature of his activities, but also to keep a bigger secret: that he is a homosexual.  At the end, though it is also mentioned throughout, we learn that such behavior was illegal in England until 1967.  Seeing that he has little choice left but to tell his story, much of the rest of what you see is him reminiscing about how he came to have a scrubbed clean file.  The homosexuality, as told in a separate set of flashbacks, stems from young Alan (Alex Lawther) being a loner at one of those stereotypical English boarding schools.  He is smarter than everyone else, and therefore bullied until he befriends Christopher Morcom (Jack Bannon).  While they become close, it is Christopher that introduces Alan to cryptography.  Together, they develop their own cipher for communication that allows for the development of unrequited romantic feelings.  It does not help on this front that Christopher dies during a school break while his family is on holiday.  It also does not lead to any real changes in Alan, though with his profound intelligence comes an arrogance that he brings with him into his interview to work at Bletchley Park.  Labeled a radio factory, it is in fact where the British government is attempting to crack the German code used for all their communication, all funneled through the so-called Enigma machine.  Because of his attitude, Commander Denniston (Charles Dance), the military representative in charge of Bletchley Park, is not keen on allowing Alan to be a part of the team.  Indeed, Alan does not feel the need to be working with others, feeling that they will only get in his way.  The others are also dedicated to more traditional methods of code breaking, which Alan feels is too time consuming to be of any use.  Instead, he begins working on a machine that will unlock Enigma as the Germans transmit their messages, which he calls Christopher.  His progress is slow, but so are those of the others, with millions of different combinations being used and only having until midnight before the cipher is changed for the next day.  This means they have to start their work all over again in the morning.  Due to this lack of making headway, Alan appeals to Stewart Menzies (Mark Strong), chief of the British secret service known as MI6.  With him, and the patronage of Winston Churchill, Alan is able to make some staffing changes at Bletchley Park.  One of his first moves is to put out a call for people who are good at solving puzzles, which is basically what code-breaking involves.  Doing so brings him Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley).  There is a certain kind of attraction between them, if only on an intellectual level.  It is she who suggests to him that he needs the others to help, thus adding peacemaker to her already extensive code breaking skills.  He luckily complies, which happens just as Commander Denniston loses his patience with Alan’s machine and attempts to fire him.  The rest of the team say they will quit if Alan is relieved of his duties, thus allowing them to carry on their work.  Still, a potential problem with Joan comes up when her parents express concern over their young, single daughter being out in society without supervision.  To solve this problem, Alan offers to marry her, which she haltingly accepts.  This is lucky, too, because it leads to her talking to Helen Stewart (Tuppence Middleton), another worker at Bletchley Park.  In introducing her to Alan’s colleague, Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode), Helen talks about some of the aspects of the transmissions she regularly intercepts from the Germans.  Specifically, she relates about a few commonly repeated words that prove to be the key to unlocking Enigma.  Doing so comes with a price.  Secrecy is of the utmost importance, thus they cannot prevent every attack by the Germans or they will find out that their code is no good.  Eventually, the need for secrecy puts a strain on the team, and Alan tells a hurt Joan that their engagement is off.  This is basically the end of the story Alan tells to Detective Nock, who is impressed but must nonetheless files the charges of indecency.  This makes the paper, and brings a sympathetic Joan to his door.  She finds a shaken man, which is physically manifested in tremors he experiences, the result of hormone pills he agreed to take instead of facing jail time.  He is evidently tortured, trying to build a new Christopher.  It is little wonder that the postscript tells us that he committed suicide in 1954.

The postscript to The Imitation Game attempts to put a positive spin on what is actually a tragedy.  Yes, I am a Catholic reviewer.  What I am not going to tell you is that it was a tragedy that he was a homosexual, although the times in which he lived did not help.  The film is called such because it is suggested that Alan had to play an elaborate ruse with society in order to keep his real identity a secret.  The best testament to how Alan lived his life is when, just as they break the German code, they learn that an attack on an Allied convoy is imminent.  They could have sent word that they knew it was coming, but this would have given away their knowledge too quickly and thus ruined the past few years’ work.  It is made even more poignant when one of their team, Peter Hilton (Matthew Beard), reveals that his brother is a sailor on one of the ships that is about to be attacked.  Alan responds by telling his peer that they cannot always do what they feel, but that they have to always do what is logical.  These are understandable words coming from a closeted homosexual regardless of the geo-political stakes.  From a Faith perspective, Alan is partially right.  Many theologians will tell you that faith in God is more about feelings than logic.  This is largely true.  At the same time, ask St. Thomas Aquinas as to whether faith can be reasonable.  Alan’s behavior is the result of a society that does not accept him.  Of course, Catholicism does not allow for homosexuality.  What it does say is that we are all children of God and deserving of love.  Alan does not seem to have experienced any kind of unconditional love, though to be fair, we are not shown what his parents were like.  Christopher does seem to accept him, but is that what turns him to homosexuality?  Importantly, we are not shown Alan being intimate with men.  In any case, my heart goes out to what seems to have been a tortured soul.

The Imitation Game is a good movie, though not a terribly exciting one.  It is a personal drama about a person who is not able to be who he thinks he should be.  God has a better idea of these things than we do, hence why I try to rely on Him for my identity.  Such an experience is absent from this film, and there are times when Alan frankly states that what they are doing is akin to be a god.  These are the bad parts of what is otherwise a well-acted and crafted film.