Immitation Game: The True Story of Alan Turing

Alan was always different than his peers.  He was a mathematical genius who had a hard time understanding social cues of others.  His on and only friend from school passed away, leaving Alan alone.  As time passed and Alan grew up, his skills would lead him to a special operation with the military during World War 2 in which he and fellow mathematician would work day after day to crack the German Enigma code.

Working with others was not one of Alan's strengths.  In fact, when beginning this mission, he locked himself in a separate room, not to be disturbed, to create his machine that would crack the Enigma codes.  With the military demanding a faster turn around rate and his teammates questioning his time on task with the mission, it seemed Alan was not going to succeed.

Fortunately, Alan did prove himself and what his machine was capable of when the Enigma code was cracked.  This accomplishment brought more burden than they imagined though.  You see, they soon realized they could not destroy Enigma, as this would cause the Germans to create something else and they would be back at stage 1.  They even had to determine which people to save and which not to in order to not seem obvious.  It was hard on all of them.

Alan was also going through some of his own personal dilemmas.  Alan's sexual orientation was masked through his marriage to a close friend and partner at the time.  Eventually she would find out and what transpired was both sad and heartfelt.  Life continued to get harder for Alan from here as the government found out about his secret and gave him hormones to "help him with his problem."  Alan would eventually end his own life as it all got to be to much for him.  He was alone and would always be so.

I didn't know if I was going to be engaged in this movie as I didn't know much about it.  I had never heard the Alan Turing story.  His life had so much triumph and hardship that tugged at my heart strings.  He was a genus and helped save thousands of lives, yet was contemned because he wasn't heterosexual.  The treatments given to him were infuriating.  I left feeling better off for hearing and seeing his story.  It was a well written and had wonderful performances from the cast.  Unsurprising as it is, Benedict Cumberbatch was astounding.