Probably the best I have ever seen.

The imitation game is a movie about Alan Turing the genius behind the idea of a machine with its own brain: the computer. The movie starts with Alan Turing applying for a top secret governmental job. He is a mathematician and cryptanalyst and is given the task of breaking the unbreakable code of the German machine: Enigma- a machine used for enciphering and deciphering secret messages.

Everyone believes the mission is impossible, except him. Turing has a theory, that the machine can only be defeated using a brain of its own kind, another machine. After Turing finishes working on Christopher (his machine) he has no idea that he has set the basis for a whole new field of science: Computer Science. Of course he does not do this alone; without Hugh Alexander, John Cairncross, Peter Hilton and obviously Joan Clarke he wouldn’t have managed.

Throughout the movie there are snippets of Turing’s personal life. Flash backs from when he was in school where it becomes clear that he was different and so bullied. His only friend was a boy named Christopher (like his machine.) At a point he proposes to Joan so that her parents agree to let her stay at Bletchley Park where they were working on cracking Enigma. This leads to the audience discovering Turing sexuality as he admits to his friend John that he doesn’t fancy Joan in ‘that way’. So he has a secret to keep which leads to him saying my favourite line in the whole movie: ‘Secrets are easy to keep when you don’t know them.’

After the war is won, Turing and his team are informed that their invention and research must be destroyed and burnt as it must be kept top secret. He does not receive any recognition for practically being the reason why Britain won the war; instead he is accused of Gross Indecency and is interrogated. During the interrogation he admits to his sexuality and is taken to court where he favours two years of hormonal treatment over two years of jail. The treatment leads to him developing a shaky composure and in the second year of treatment he ends his life.

Alan Turing commits suicide.
The final scene didn’t fail to impress. While watching the movie I couldn’t help but think the movie was so good throughout that the ending was bound to be a disappointment like The Theory of Everything was for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wrong about anything in my life. Cumberbatch and knightly were so…they were so; I fail to articulate the magnificence of their performance. When my computer screen went black I realized I was full on crying and I couldn’t stop thinking why the world is so complicated? Didn’t all humanity want the same things, or not?

World war two would have been two years longer if it wasn’t for Alan and it is estimated that he saved fourteen million lives. He managed to do all of this because one person, Christopher, was kind to him. Imagine what the world would be like, what Alan Turing the hero genius’s life would have been like if there were more Christophers in this world.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Turing was a man that society viewed had everything wrong with him. He was different, bullied an outcast and homosexual yet he managed to save fourteen million lives. He believed that sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of that do the things that no one can imagine. No matter whom you are, what you are, there is nothing you can’t do. As tribute to Turing people should stop turning the heroes of this world into criminals. I learnt this from The Imitation Game what will you learn.