Of all the performances I’ve seen on the screen this year, there is little doubt in my mind that Benedict Cumberbatch‘s work as mathematician-turned-codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game is among the best. I’m certainly not the only one with this opinion, and it’s clear The Weinstein Co. recognizes what it has in its hands with both Cumberbatch’s performance and the film itself as today The Hollywood Reporter provides us an exclusive featurette in which the cast and crew of the film, including writer Graham Moore and co-star Keira Knightley, talk about the film and Cumberbatch’s ability to bring the audience into Turing’s story.
“His life has suddenly become this sort of real life spy thriller that he’s living through, and so we wanted the film to sort of experientially put the audience inside Turing’s head,” Moore says in the clip, and if there’s any one aspect of the film I appreciate most, it is exactly that. For me, The Imitation Game works best when its characters are fully engaged in cracking the Nazis’ code. Further, Moore and director Morten Tyldum do a good job of not bogging the film down with a ton of exposition. We see Turing, his mind spinning, hands tinkering with his codebreaking machine, and I was really fascinated by it all. I sat in my seat trying to figure out the character’s thought process and see where exactly it would lead him and his team, and so I think the film does a great job of pulling the audience into the experience.
I have a lot of films and shows still to see and catch up on, with a huge backlog sitting in my Netflix queue and a giant stack of films piled on my desk, so I actually haven’t even seen “Sherlock” yet — shame on me, I know — but I can only imagine Cumberbatch’s performance in it is top-notch as well. He is a very gifted actor, and his co-stars agree, with Charles Dance adding, “When I heard that Benedict was going to be doing it, I thought, yeah, that’s very, very, very good casting.” Indeed, Mr. Dance, indeed.
The Imitation Game tells the story of Alan Turing and his team as they attempt to crack a secret code used by the Germans, a feat that would prove a striking blow to the Nazi war efforts and ultimately allow the Allies to win World War II. Go ahead and check out the featurette below, and if you haven’t yet seen the film, it is expanding into more theaters today and opens nationwide on Christmas Day.
