The Imitation Game: A Review of Historical Accuracy and Themes

This argumentative film review analyzes the historical accuracy and thematic elements of Morten Tyldum's "The Imitation Game." The review focuses on the movie's depiction of historical events, the portrayal of sexuality, and the impact on the audience's perspective. It examines the setting during World War II, the role of key characters like Alan Turing, and the societal context of the time. The review also evaluates external factors such as costumes, architecture, and technological innovations. The author argues that the film's portrayal of historical events and the protagonist's struggles profoundly impact the audience, transforming their perspectives on sexuality and societal norms. The review references several sources to support its claims and provides a comprehensive analysis of the film's strengths and weaknesses.

Running Head: FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1FILM REVIEW
The purpose of this argumentative study is to analyze the historical aspects, setting or
geographic features role of men and women and sexuality as depicted in the movie Imitation
Game. This argumentative study also focuses on the time period, in which the film took place,
perspective of the society towards sexuality that time, the movie set, the ancient world or
civilization the film attempts to portray. In this context this film throws lights on the interaction
between main characters in the film, the external factors like-appearance of various class in the
film, their clothing, architecture and technological innovation in the film. Hence, the thesis
statement of this essay argues that, the historical events, external factors, portrayal of the agony
of the protagonist in the movie are capable of impacting the audience deeply leading to transform
their perspective towards sexuality.
The Imitation game is an American historical drama which is directed by Morten Tyldum
and released in the year 2014. The substance of the movie is inspired by the real life story of
Alan Turing, a British mathematician, cryptanalyst as well as one of the pioneers of researches
related to computer science. The setting of the movie was Sherborne School, laboratories, war
ground.
The historical plot was World War II, Alan’s journey in Sherborne School, his growth as
a mathematician, his success to decrypt German intelligence messages, in order to assist British
government during the commencement of Second World War.
Christensen (2014), argues that, the movie focuses on the expression of sexuality of
Alan., his unconditional love for Christopher Morcom, his unashamed attitude for being a gay.
The out of the box attitude, the different perspective towards sexuality, the carefree expression of
love for another man by Alan and the unacceptance by the society; all these portray the hostilities
that people with a different perspective towards sexuality used to face that time. A man’s love

2FILM REVIEW
for another man, his sexual intentions was restricted by laws at that time. Hence the film casts
upon a deep impact on society and provides a message that, love is not restricted by any kinds of
laws rules and classification of gender.
According to Prothero (2015), the film has depicted historical issues during War II, the
emerges of an extremely talented computer scientist Alan Turing, his personal life, sexuality, the
unashamed expression of being a gay, his fight with all the legal and societal obstacles to
establish his sexual identity. In the meantime, his most crucial contribution as well as assistance
to British government was also focused. Hence, this movie has presented two different scenario-
political as well as social, depending on two different issues-Warfare and sexual identity.
Mathewson et al. (2018) argues that, this film has basically portrayed the talent, technical
advancements, the skills of encryption and decryption and how did it helped British government
during the second world War.
Evaluating the movie, it can be said that, historical time depicted was the turmoil during
world war II, the conventions of the society at that time are portrayed beautifully in the movie.
The events, costumes and attire truly represents the lifestyle of that time. The main characters of
the movie are Alan Turing, Christopher Morcom, Joan Clarke, Hugh Alexander and so on.
Technological innovation are perfectly shown all through the movie. The War Like situation are
tensions are vividly recreated. The interaction of various classes of the society their attitude
towards issues related to the war, their unacceptance towards to different sexual identity of Alan
are flawlessly depicted. The narration are sequential the camera work is excellent. The whole
movie is capable of recreating social and political scenario during World War II.

3FILM REVIEW
Reference
Christensen, Chris. "Review of The Imitation Game: The Imitation Game, film, directed by
Morten Tyldum. The Weinstein Company, New York, 2014 (US distribution)." Cryptologia 41,
no. 2 (2017): 178-181.
Mathewson, Kory W., and Piotr Mirowski. "Improbotics: Exploring the Imitation Game using
Machine Intelligence in Improvised Theatre." arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.01807 (2018).
Jannah, M. Miftahul. "Anxiety And Defense Mechanism On Alan Turing In The Imitation Game
Movie." Yogyakarta: UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta (2016).
Prothero, Donald. "Flawed scientific geniuses on the big screen: a review of two new movies: the
Stephen Hawking biography The Theory of Everything, and the Alan Turing biography The
Imitation Game." Skeptic (Altadena, CA) 20, no. 2 (2015): 50-52.
Tyldum, Morten, Alexandre Desplat, Graham Moore, and Nora Grossman. The imitation game.
Ascot Elite Home Entertainment, 2015.