The Imitation Game :- The Turing Machine.

 I have not heard so much 'British' since I first watched 'The Jewel In The Crown' and 'Heat And Dust' several decades ago!

I had heard of 'Turing' when I was a University student; there was a brief mention of the 'Turing' machine in a formal way  as a  scientific idea that led to the invention of modern computers. However, it was quite different from the 'historical' perspective presented in this emotionally charged movie. The story is about five young people who are hired by British government to decode German encrypted messages which will help Britain save millions of lives by pre-empting the German strikes on their ships.The German submarines had destroyed many British ships  including some carrying food. USA was supplying daily rations![The events took place during the World War 2].

The five young chaps are very smart - their expertise ranges from mathematics to solving  crossword puzzles, you see! They argue and insult each other initially about who has the better idea - but one amongst them is the 27 year old math professor named Allan Turing; who is considered a prodigy. His idea was to invent a machine that will help them decode the messages on the same day - there are trillions of ways to  encode the messages using the small typewriter like German machine named Enigma.

Turing faces a lot of opposition from his bosses as he slowly trudges along building the machine. They threaten to fire him and stop his funding. Finally by sheer luck he notices a pattern in the incoming messages , which dramatically reduces the number of ways a message could have been encoded! Now they have a working model of the machine that will help the British decode German messages fast enough to take action.

Turing names his machine 'Christopher' after his friend by that name who had saved his life and sanity when he was nailed below the wood floor by a few of his mischievous school friends during his school days. That might explain why he did not have any friends and appeared so unemotional!

He even saves his love interest's life(played by Kiera Knightly) by asking her to distance herself from him towards the end when his boss issues a warning that she might be charged for high treason for possession of a few German messages in her bag. She was part of the team that helped Turing in building the machine. Turing confesses of being a homosexual in his younger days when the British law treated homosexuality as a crime. He compromises by accepting psychiatric treatment instead and becomes a sick person. Turing died at the age of 42. [In reality, Turing made many contributions to the field of Computer Science after the Enigma project that led to the building of Modern computers. Can you imagine a world where there were no computers !?]

All the actors play their roles expertly generating appropriate amount  of drama and emotions. The real Turing does not appear as handsome and entertaining in his photographs!