“What if only a
machine can defeat another machine?”
Last night, Wednesday 8th October 2014 I was one
of the lucky ones, packed into a Cineworld (High Wycombe in my case), watching
a simultaneous screening of the London premiere and gala opening of ‘The
Imitation Game’ biopic of my hero Alan Turing (My PhD is based on the imitation game to explore machine thinking). Thank you to Show Films First,
Amex and the BFI 2014 Film Festival for making this opportunity possible.
Drawing away from the film the mantra ‘Don’t be normal, be
Turing’ reverberated in my thoughts all the way back to my home in a London
suburb.
Watching the film compels you not to try to 'fit in', it will
be seen as a pretence and you’ll be dismissed for it, better to be yourself, be
as brilliant as it is possible for you to be, you may be disliked intensely, it
may polarise people’s opinions about you, (in the cricket world currently one
only has to look at how a batting "talent that comes along too rarely" Kevin Pietersen has been treated by
some of his fellow team members and the English Cricket Board, ECB). But being
despised is better than being ignored. Turing was not ignored, no one could ignore
Turing.
Stepping back to yesterday morning, before I saw ‘The
Imitation Game’ movie, I had really wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play Turing, as had been mooted in 2011 with Ron Howard to direct Graham Moore's script based on Oxford mathematician Andrew Hodges' biography. Leo has a
similar square-ish face shape to Turing’s – handsome.
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| Young Turing_Young Leo |
Benedict Cumberbatch’s
face is elongated and he doesn’t look anything like Turing, but then neither do
Derek Jacobi (BBC Breaking the Code) and Ed Stoppard (Channel 4’s Codebreaker)
who have also played Alan Turing.
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| Adult Turing - Derek Jacobi - Ed Stoppard |
Benedict is
Sherlock Holmes, he seems to epitomise that kind of annoying logical
smartass and mechanical sleuth.
Yesterday Benedict was Turing.
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| Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in 'The Imitation Game' |
Let’s turn to what I felt after seeing ‘The Imitation Game’ film.
In 'The Imitation Game' film, the characters, and brilliant acting talent portraying the
people around Turing at times in his life, included:
Mark Strong (Welcome
to the Punch, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Kick Ass) plays the mysterious but
Turing-supportive MI6 head Stewart Menzies who passed Turing’s 1941 request for
resources to Churchill. That Prime Minister responded and gave the resources in
the plea, unlike David Cameron who had no money to support the Alan Turing
centenary events in 2012, including the ‘London Inspire Mark’ award winning
Turing100 series of practical Turing tests at the place where Turing broke the
enigma code, well, not in Hut 8, but in Bletchley Park mansion’s Billiard and
Ballroom on 23 June 2012.
Turing’s 100th birthday. Mark Strong said, on the red
carpet of the gala opening of the BFI London Film Festival: “I hope enough
people in the UK know who Alan Turing is, because he is a hero”. Last night in
Cineworld at least one of the staff members learnt who Alan Turing was, she
asked me after the film what I thought and what certificate it should have, I
feel it’s okay for children to watch with parents, in fact they should watch
because it will inspire them. More than an Oscar or any ‘gong’, if this movie
reaches more people beyond the world of us academics who work in his legacy,
widens the circle of interest in Turing, then the film will be a major
achievement of the entire production and cast.
Charles Dance
said of his character in the film, Commander Denniston, that he was “a bit of a prat” .
I’ll leave the reader to watch the film and find out why J
Keira Knightly. One can forget that her character, Joan Clarke, is not a made-up female
drawing on cinematic licence ticking all the boxes to connect movies with
movie-goers watching them, and who will want to watch them over and over again. Joan Clarke was very real, a first-class Cambridge-educated mathematician like Turing, who was, because she
was female, designated a linguist rather than a code-breaker. We can easily
forget that in the time Joan was part of Turing’s life it was less than two
decades since women had been granted the vote on equal terms with men in the UK
(in 1928), and how at Bletchley Park during WWII women assisted men as ‘secretaries’,
but were capable of a lot more if given the opportunity, which Joan Clarke
showed she so obviously was.
Times are better for women, but still not great –
in the second decade of of the 21st century the UK still has far
fewer females populating the higher echelons of academia as University Vice
Chancellors. Keira Knightly brings Joan Clarke out of the shadows into the
light as a heroine herself and a role model for girls today. Thank you to Keira, for portraying Joan Clarke, not as a glamorous kitten in ‘The Imitation Game’ but
with gracious simplicity masking an inner quality beyond beauty as Turing’s
mind-for-mind friend.
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| Keira Knightley as codebreaker Joan Clarke |
Benedict Cumberbatch. BBC’s Sherlock Holmes, Benedict was not that character as
Alan Turing. Depicting the ‘confidant in his work’ mathematician, belief in ‘Turing
as the codebreaker; and what the logician was doing, what was needed to be done
at that crucial time and how to realise it in a not-normal way, pitting a
machine against another machine by firstly focusing on getting a big machine
built – was genius thinking. The film does not shirk from the fact that Turing
was a homosexual, it’s ever present, but what the film does is not
sensationalise that feature of Turing’s character. Alan Turing was much, much
more than a homosexual man – he was a complex human being. This is what Benedict
captures in his interpreting Turing, played brilliantly as a pioneer who
challenged and risked to improve the world. Turing was not perfect, who is? Who
wants to be? Turing was not normal; goodness the world needs more not-normals. The Imitation Game showed
us that elegantly.
Finally about the film, there are scenes in the movie that I don’t
recognise, or remember reading about in Andrew Hodges biography ‘Alan Turing:
the enigma’, or his mother Sara Turing’s book, that the film presents as
happening to Turing. It is unimportant as far as the concept of the movie goes –
I recall a Greek colleague piqued that Brad Pitt’s Troy related Achilles killed inside the city, rather than what we’re tuned to by the myth. Creativity in ‘The
Imitation Game’ tells a great story of a dazzling intellectual, of the heroic
Alan Turing who needs to be as well-known as Leonardo Da Vinci and Einstein. Thanks
to Morten Tyldum's movie he will be.
YouTube 'Introduction to The Imitation Game BFI 2014 LFF gala screening':
YouTube 'Introduction to The Imitation Game BFI 2014 LFF gala screening':
YouTube 'The Imitation Game premiere, red carpet interviews at the 2014 London Film Festival':
Interviews of the cast of 'The Imitation Game', including Mark Stong here:
http://www.wltx.com/video/3828641267001/51325932001/INTERVIEW---Mark-Strong-on-the-film-and-history-on-Alan-Turing-being-at-Betchley-Park-at-The-Imitation-Game-Gala-Opening
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Readers might want to check the the 60th anniversary 'Turing on Emotions' 2014 special volume (5) with two issues of papers ranging from articles about Turing the man to Turing-related work in the international journal of synthetic emotions (IJSE), they include:
Film Theory and Chatbots. 5(1), pages 17-22
The Emotions of Alan Turing: The Boy Who Explained Einstein's Theory of Relativity Aged 15 1/2 for his Mother. 5(1), pages 23-30
The Turing Test: A New Appraisal. 5(1), pages 31-45
Feelings of a Cyborg. 5 (2), pages 1-6
Turing's Three Senses of Emotional. 5 (2), pages 7-20
The Social Psychology of Dialogue Simulation as Applied in Elbot. 5 (2), pages 21-30
See here for full contents list of IJSE Volume 5 issues 1-2:
http://www.igi-global.com/journal/international-journal-synthetic-emotions-ijse/1144
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Update 23 November 2014
I've now seen The Imitation Game film five times (8 October and 8 November pre-UK release, then 16, 18 and 22 November), once with my boss and his wife. W/E 22-23 November, the Turing story on film is sitting at number two in the IMDB Box Office after Interstellar - Chris Nolan's 2001: Kubrick inspired space adventure.
The more I see the Imitation Game the more I admire Turing-type characters who have such self-belief and confidence in their talent that they challenge authority with the nature of a child. The scene in the film where Cumberbatch's Turing roars "You people will never understand the importance of what I am creating here" reminds of every time 'authority' continues with its old ways regardless of how unsuccessful they may be, too weak to take the risk, too self-important to envelope imagination.
