Alan Turing’s work with computers changed all our lives. Before that, he was pivotal in the fight against the Nazis, as this consummate drama reveals.
Unfolding over three time periods in Turing’s life (his childhood, the events in the early 1950s that followed a break-in at his house and eventually saw him arrested for homosexuality, and his work on creating a computer to break the Nazi’s Enigma code machine), Morten Tyldum’s riveting film paints a portrait of a complex and brilliant man. Assigned to Bletchley Park to work with the team on cracking the code, Turing receives the backing of Churchill to create his machine. At the same time, just as his dialogue with his creation consumes him, Turing’s difficulty in communicating with the people around him becomes more pronounced. Benedict Cumberbatch is superb as Turing, his performance allowing us to understand and ultimately empathise with his plight. There’s also great support from Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode and a particularly waspish Charles Dance.
