Resting on past laurels?

The Imitation Game (2014)
The Brits, ever nostalgic over the times when the sun never set on their empire, are still not done with their success stories. This time around yet another angle of their success indecoding the unbreakable German Enigma machine.
The movie did not really strike as a suspense thriller but rather as one sympathetic to the plight of the LGBTQ community. And we have been too many of that kind of late!

The story is not anything new. As it is of historical nature, the outcome is well known, nothing unexpected.

It tells of a Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch of Sherlock fame), a socially awkward mathematical genius who is recruited an encryptor during the WW2 era. He and his team managed to decipher the German codes and potentially shorten the war by a good two years.

Kiera Knighley as Joan Clarke

The real Joan Clarke

The real issue that the film makers are trying to highlight is that a man of such stature, his deed to the country is reciprocated by his subsequent imprisonment and chemical castration for homosexuality. His incarceration ended with his apparent suicide.

During his tour of duty, he was engaged to his co-worker, Joan Clarke. As we can see from the picture below, a plain Jane, mathematical whiz and crossword puzzle maestro is made larger than life with the razzmatazz and make-up as portrayed by the lovely Kiera Knightley. An average movie by my taste.

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