The Imitation Game: The tragic story of Alan Turing

The father of computer science

If there was a computer program that could identify the least famous person of the 20th century with the greatest proportional impact on the 21st, it would likely choose Alan Turing.

A British mathematician working at England’s famed Bletchley Park during the Second World War, Turing was instrumental in breaking the Nazi Enigma code, thereby helping the allies win the war. In addition, his work laid the foundation for the creation of computers as we have them today.

Despite his colossal contributions, Turing was arrested in 1952 for being gay, illegal in the UK at the time. He was subjected to estrogen injections to avoid prison and died from cyanide poisoning in 1954, just shy of his 42nd birthday.

Turing’s story is tailor-made for an Oscar-worthy film treatment, and The Imitation Game certainly delivers that. The question remains whether the film presents an accurate portrayal of Turing’s life, and more important, whether it draws the best conclusions from that life.

Taking artistic liberties with history

Like many historical films, The Imitation Game does a good job recreating the look and feel of the era in which it is set. The costumes and settings, the lighting and pacing, all combine to evoke the Britain of the Second World War, or at least a reasonable approximation of how most of us imagine it to have been.

At the same time, also like many historical films, The Imitation Game takes a number of liberties with its source material for dramatic effect. Real people and events are at times distorted, exaggerated or simplified to serve the story. Occasionally there are characters or situations that never existed, invented from whole cloth and added to the mix.

That’s perfectly fine, as far as it goes. After all, the filmmakers never intended to produce a historical documentary. They wanted to tell a story with themes that resonate with a contemporary audience.

One of those themes gets repeated via dialogue, two or three times during the movie: “Sometimes it’s the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

This is a valuable observation. Quite often, in fact, it’s the creative geniuses who are also the social outcasts, whose ideas wind up benefitting humanity and changing the world. To that end, Turing is portrayed in the film as being on the autism spectrum, socially inept but intellectually brilliant, whose unique perspective leads to the breakthroughs that win the day.

Artificial intelligence and Turing’s supposed social dysfunction

However at this point, the film oversteps the historical facts. While undeniably eccentric, Turing was by all accounts a reasonably socialized individual who had friends, a sense of humour and a decent ability to work with others.

It’s strange but true that God often gives gifts of exceptional creativity and intellect to the most socially awkward individuals. But it isn’t always so. God, it must be remembered, distributes His gifts as He sees fit. He’s just as capable of creating well-adjusted geniuses with winsome personalities when He desires.

The notion of Turing’s social dysfunction also drives another of the film’s themes: the blurring of the line between man and machine. As the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, Turing makes an ideal vehicle to explore this concept. In an early flashback, he confides to a friend that normal conversation, with its non-literal social cues, is an undecipherable code to him. Whether this exchange occurred in real life, it leads Turing in the film toward a mechanistic view of humanity, following predicable rules devoid of social nuance, indistinguishable in the end from a machine.

But this view is completely at odds with genuine humanity as created by God in His own image. It’s humanity without creativity, volition or moral capacity. It’s humanity without a soul.

Turing as a symbol for LGBTQ concerns

And that leads, in its own way, to the film’s other major theme: Turing’s gay status and the horrific way he was made to suffer for it. To be fair, the movie treats this aspect of Turing’s life in an understated manner. It avoids overt depictions, taking a more matter-of-fact approach. Yet for all that, the film doesn’t shy away from its politically charged point. As with the line between man and machine, the distinction between being bullied for social ineptitude and arrested for being gay gets blurred.

Even so, the movie came in for criticism from members of the LGBTQ community and others for not focusing enough attention on Turing’s being gay. And that’s a pity, because it reduces Turing, the brilliant unconventional thinker who helped win the war and change the modern world, to a symbol for LGBTQ concerns.

Yes, he was treated terribly by the society of his day, forced to undergo chemical castration and dying an early death, whether by accident or his own hand. Yes, it took the British government over half a century to recognize the wrongs done him and to offer him a posthumous pardon. However, none of that goes toward legitimizing his sexual behaviour. Like all of us, he was a real person bearing the image of God as well as the marks of sin.

The Imitation Game is a well-produced and brilliantly acted film that explores a number of complex issues through the exceptional but tragic life of Alan Turing. Yet in the end, one is left to wonder: if Turing hadn’t been a gay man but merely an eccentric, misunderstood genius, would the film ever have been made?

[Note: this article does not constitute an endorsement of the movie, The Imitation Game, by Focus on the Family Canada. Consult the full review at Plugged In to help you determine whether The Imitation Game is appropriate for you or your family.]

Sources and further reading

L.V. Anderson, “How accurate is The Imitation Game?” Slate, December 3, 2014.

Kaitlyn Elisabet Bonsell, “The monstrous machine: The mechanistic worldview of ‘The Imitation Game’,” Breakpoint, January 7, 2015.

Christian Caryl, “A poor imitation of Alan Turing,” The New York Review of Books, December 19, 2014.

Andrew Grant, “‘The Imitation Game’ entertains at the expense of accuracy,” Science News, December 30, 2014.

Roland Pease, “Alan Turing: Inquest’s suicide verdict ‘not supportable’,” BBC News, June 26, 2012.

Alex von Tunzelmann, “The Imitation Game: Inventing a new slander to insult Alan Turing,” The Guardian, November 20, 2014.

Alissa Wilkinson, “The Imitation Game: Benedict Cumberbatch makes even the invention of the computer into compelling cinema,” Christianity Today, November 25, 2014.

Toby Young, “The misguided bid to turn Alan Turing into an Asperger’s martyr,” The Spectator, January 10, 2015.