Information is beautiful wonderfully summarizes the factual accuracy for historical dramas/biopics from The Wolf of Wall Street, Hidden Figures, Hacksaw Ridge, etc. But you’re here for the film that scored last place on historical accuracy.
The Imitation Game is one of the most historically inaccurate films analyzed. In summary, it covers how Alan Turing, the father of Computer Science working as a cryptographer at Bletchly Park, decrypted the Nazi Enigma machine, and contributed significantly to victory for the allies in WWII. He was arrested for homosexuality and perhaps killed himself with a cyanide Apple from the “treatment” he received (no, Apple isn’t named after his weapon of alleged suicide).
60% of it is fiction, with almost every other detail being completely fabricated. The worst part isn’t the fabricated conflicts with Turing’s superiors/colleagues and fake espionage/spy subplot or that mere cryptographers got to decide which decrypted messages would be acted upon.
Instead, what bothers me was that Turing never built the Bombe or the first computer, breaking Enigma was a large effort beyond just him, and he wasn’t autistic, unwitting, OCD, or spiteful.
But what does it matter? Do you think a teenager watching these flicks cares about historical accuracy? They want to be inspired, moved, and given a vision of what they want to become.
“Mom, I wanna be a F1 driver like Niki Lauda from Rush!”
“Dad, I wanna be a mathematician like Katherine Goble from Hidden Figures!”
“Mom, I wanna be a nuclear physist like Legasov from Chernobyl who said ‘what is the cost of lies?’!” (he never said that; how ironic)
“Dad, I wanna be an investment analyst like Mark Baum from The Big Short!”
Lying to inspire people is as white as a lie can get. Now imagine this:
“Dad, I wanna be a computer scientist like that anxious, sociopathic, mean inventor/genius Alan Turing from the Imitation Game! Maybe if I try to isolate myself, focus on focusing, understand that computers can replace human connection, and spend a lot of time dragging and dropping Scratch code blocks, I’ll be able to accomplish what he did.”
Oh man. As soon as anyone takes this movie seriously past the Oscar bait novelty, it sends a detrimental message about how to be a good protagonist in your story: by ignoring the other characters.
Steve Jobs didn’t create the iPhone, the Mac, or anything by himself! Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t a robot in Harvard who created Facebook because of his objective stance on HCI. He was a psych/comp-sci major who wanted to connect people on campus!
The cost of these lies is a generation of people who have good ideas to improve life but neglect the value of a team and people in general, setting themselves up for failure.
So what is the cost of The Imitation Game’s lies? Maybe nothing; I might just be having a pessimistic ⅕-life crisis. Or maybe, the future of technology is on the line with a generation believing that they are behaving just as a good protagonist should, forgetting that reality has no protagonists.
It was at this moment that Raheel realized he might be one of those people, overestimating his significance in the lives of others.