The Imitation Game

How outraged I am once more!

Last night I have finally had the chance to see another star of the 2015 Oscars, The Imitation Game and once more I was unable to comprehend how could The Academy reward Birdman as the best picture of the year within a list of this many amazing nominees.

I saw the Oscars award ceremony before I saw The Imitation Game and I was touched by the speech of Graham Moore who won the Best Adapted Screenplay.

His acceptance speech want as:

"I tried to commit suicide at 16 and now I'm standing here, I would like for this moment to be for that kid out there who feels like she doesn't fit in anywhere. You do. Stay weird. Stay different, and then when it's your turn and you are standing on this stage pass the same message along."

This was a beautiful message and seeing him with his eyes full of tears as he was saying these words was as touching as it could get. However I understood the even deeper message within those words after I saw the movie.

The Imitation Game is about the life and works of the British mathematics prodigy Alan Turing, who helped solve the code of German encryption machine Enigma during the World War II. With the techniques he devised to breaking German ciphers and the electromechanical machine that could fin the setting to the Enigma machine, Turing is believed to have shorten the war about two years. Turing was prosecuted in 1952 to homosexual acts and he accepted the oestrogen injections treatment as an alternative to prison sentence.

Turing's biographers Andrew Hodges and David Leavitt have suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 Walt Disney film Snow White, which was his favourite fairy tale, both noting that he took "an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew."

So going back to the movie, what really captured me was the strong messages given the entire time. The first part of the film is focused on the matter of prejudice against women and homosexuals with the mixture of perfect amount of comedic moments. The second part of the film is a little a heavier in context. By heavier I don't mean that it is hard to watch or boring. Just the opposite; the entire story is intertwined in a way that couldn't possibly give you a dull moment. Not a single scene was wasted on irrelevancy. The heaviness I am referring to the side of the war this movie shows you which not many prefer to depict.

We all have seen many war themed movies, especially about World War II, and we have been moved by the tragedy of the families, the deaths, the fights,the blood... What is different here is that The Imitation Game is not about the soldiers that are fighting with their blood; it's a about maybe the cruelest part of the war: the decision making.

Many people decide to put their countries above all else and go to fight and shed others' and their own blood. But who decides who should be sacrificed and who should be saved? Who gives the order to allow the enemy kill their own to achieve something else? In my opinion, the cruelest part of the war is people playing God. And among all those great movies that demonstrate the horrors of the war, I have never seen one that is this successful to demonstrate the cruelty of prioritising and gambling on peoples lives.

In my humble opinion, there has never been a movie that deserved the Best Adapted Screenplay award as much as The Imitation Game and Graham Moore. Even though I am a Whiplash fanatic, I could even root for The Imitation game to receive the Best Motion Picture of the Year.

Thank you for reading my humble opinion.