Way back in 2018, the Bank of England announced the shortlist for the new £50 note, consisting of great scientific minds such as Stephen Hawking, Ada Lovelace and Alexander Graham Bell, all deserving nominees in their own right but both Mark and I were rooting for Alan Turing, the father of modern computing. So, when the Bank of England revealed that Turing would be the face of the new note, I figured that this would be a perfect time to share my review of the 2014 Oscar-winning film, The Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the man himself.

“Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things that no one can imagine.”

With a timeline that jumps pleasantly across three interwoven narratives, The Imitation Game is part war drama, part biographical picture and shines a light on the remarkable achievements of a team of code-breakers, led by Alan Turing, who broke the German Enigma machine and shortened the Second World War by two years, saving approximately 14 million lives in the process. The team’s achievements remained a government-held secret for almost fifty years.

Despite having smuggled an Enigma machine out of Berlin, it is impossible for the British military to decode the intercepted German messages without knowing the machines settings. With the settings changing every day at midnight and the first message intercepted around 6am, the team only have about eighteen hours to figure out the code before all of their hard work is wasted and they have to start all over again. For those unaware of the enormity of their task, there are a 159 million million (!) possible solutions to run through. Every. Single. Day.

Whilst most of the team work on cracking the code, Alan Turing starts to build a machine – ‘Christopher’ – that he believes will crack the code every single time. As is often the case with socially awkward geniuses, Turing’s abrasive and haughty manner isolates him from most of the other although he does form a close bond with team member and fellow outsider Joan Clarke, who encourages him to make friends as the rest of the team “won’t help him if they don’t like him”.

As difficult as it may have been to break the code, the biggest puzzle comes with what to do with the information once they have it. Give away too much and the Germans will reconfigure Enigma and stop all radio communications, don’t reveal enough and the Allied forces will lose the war.

As I’ve previously stated, there are three interwoven narratives center to this story and Turing’s achievement is both bookended and marred by his homosexuality. As a schoolboy, he is an intellectual outsider struggling with vicious bullying, his emerging sexuality and the death of his only friend – Christopher. As an adult, Turing is arrested for gross indecency aka homosexuality, which was illegal in Britain until 1967, and is subjected to chemical castration until his suicide in 1954.

The story is excellently paced and beautifully shot but what makes The Imitation Game so special, in my opinion, is the absolutely stellar cast, the veritable cream of the British crop. It doesn’t matter how big or small the part, everyone delivers.

Charles Dance channels a Tywin-esque performance in his role as Commander Denniston, a straight-laced patriotic military man who takes an instant dislike to Turing’s haughty and superior demeanor. The vastly underappreciated British staple that is Mark Strong appears as Stewart Menzies, a member of the newly formed MI6, delivering a typically consistent performance that is reliable and comfortingly familiar.

Matthew Beard, Allen Leech, Matthew Goode and Kiera Knightley deliver solid performances as fellow members of the code-breaking team. Hugh Alexander (Goode) is the arrogantly charming ladies man, John Cairncross (Leech) is the supportive understanding member of the team with a secret of his own and Peter Hilton (Beard) acts as the voice for those impacted most by the decisions the team have to make. As the only woman in the group, Keira Knightley plays to her period drama strengths and delivers a performance that goes toe-to-toe with Benedict Cumberbatch’s.

Despite the strength of the cast, I think it is fair to say that the success of the film falls squarely on the shoulders of its leading man and Cumberbatch definitely delivers- seven years on and I’m still bitter about him losing the Best Actor Oscar to Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking (Theory of Everything).

It may have taken until 2013 for Alan Turing to receive a royal pardon for his ‘crimes’ but The Imitation Game goes a long way to shining a much needed light on a British hero. So check out this film and if you are lucky enough to get your hands on one of those crisp new £50 notes, take a minute to appreciate the man who not only won us the war but also shaped the world we live in, in a way that I’m sure even he couldn’t have imagined.