Star Apps: 'The Imitation Game'
Generally, victors win the spoils of war, but all Alan Turing got was a spoiled legacy. Winston Churchill called him the greatest contributor to Allied victory, and today's programmers call him the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence, but Turing lived his post-World War II years disgraced by a homosexuality conviction. "The Imitation Game," starring Benedict Cumberbatch, aims to correct this wrong. I spoke with screenwriter Graham Moore ("The Sherlockian," "The Devil in the White City") and actor Allen Leech ("Rome," "The Tudors," "Downton Abbey"), who plays Soviet double agent John Cairncross in "The Imitation Game," about recasting Turing; deciphering cryptology, Turing puzzles, and Enigma machines; and their favorite apps.
Benedict Cumberbatch plays computing pioneer Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, which opens November 28.
(Credit: Miramax Films)
What was your goal with this film?
Graham Moore: To expose a new audience to Alan Turing's story. It had been told in biographies, a couple great novels, and onstage in Hugh Whitemore's "Breaking the Code." There have been documentaries, but never a full-on cinematic treatment of Turing's story. We felt that Alan Turing's legacy deserves to be so much better known than it is. Computer programmers will come up to me after screenings sometimes and say, "I've heard of Alan Turing, I know the Turing test, I studied him at university, but I had no idea he was gay or suffered such horrible persecution at the hands of his government or that he's the man behind these amazing accomplishments." We wanted to show the full spectrum of Alan Turing's life.
Allen Leech: My desire to be in this movie was so we could tell this man's story and so we could shed light on the injustices he suffered. I also love that although it's a tragic story, it's told in a way that it's a celebration of his life and a real tribute to being different.
Both of you are associated with historical projects. What's so compelling about period pieces?
Allen Leech: I'm fascinated by history and the characters that existed. I love immersing myself in another time, when society, class, culture were so different, and see how we developed as a society and as people. I've had the privilege of going back all the way to Roman times and coming up through a time where I play a character that's drawn and quartered. It's kind of a morbid privilege to experience what these people experienced, and just getting into the minds of historical characters is a great challenge as an actor.
Graham Moore: I have written a couple of historical pieces in a row. I love being able to explore contemporary issues in other times. The issues going on in Alan Turing's life are such contemporary issues. But we can talk about them by dramatizing history and showing you how not that long ago these issues were being treated. Then on some dorky level, I just love research -- just being able to dive in. This story obviously required that, because we were solving our own historical mystery. At Bletchley Park we have such poor records of what actually happened, because much of it was burned or remains classified. So we were off doing our own research and piecing as many sources together to get a sense of what actually happened.
How much did filming at Bletchley Park inform the making of the movie?
Allen Leech: The part we filmed in was largely untouched. When you walked in, you got a great sense of their presence still within those walls. You could imagine the energy that went through that room, the frustrations they went through every day, and this was the only place they could go to let off steam. All of us walked in, the hair stood up on the backs of our necks. Matthew Goode said, "If we dusted for fingerprints, you'd probably find them here." That's how untouched it was. That reminded us of the importance of what these people did and also how incredible the task was set in front of us. Having the ability to use locations that these people existed in cemented for me the importance of the story we were telling.
Graham Moore: Accuracy was so important to us, so shooting at real locations whenever possible was preferable. We shot at Bletchley for a week and Sherborne, his boarding school, for a week. Every Enigma machine you see in the film is a real Enigma machine used by the Nazis. I remember a funny moment when the insurance guy brought one over and said, "Be gentle with this thing." You open the lid, and it has the Nazi logo. You almost don't want to touch it. It has a long block of text. We wondered what it says. We thought it was propaganda, but someone German on the crew came over and said it was just the cleaning instructions.
How did you handle all the complicated cryptology work in the film?
Allen Leech: We were afforded the luxury of two and a half weeks of rehearsals. That was an amazing opportunity to come together with the research we had done separately in this room and flesh out these characters and what would have occurred at Bletchley Park in those days, and that was based on who knows what about the machine. It's so complex. We had a broad understanding, but that's it.
Did you try the Alan Turing puzzle yourselves?
Graham Moore: Yeah, we tried to solve it one day, and it was a disaster. We collectively got four answers, and we thought, "We've bamboozled them all into thinking we know anything about code breaking, because we don't. We're terrible at it."
Allen Leech [far right] plays a spy in the house of Turing in The Imitation Game.
(Credit: Miramax Films)
Allen, in the film you play a British spy who is actually a Soviet spy. How difficult was it to play a character who was in essence playing another character?
Allen Leech: I think playing a character who's playing a character is challenging, because he's hiding his status within that group. He's an outsider, a bit like Turing. That's one element that comes across in the writing that I really liked, because they're both hiding. They're both characters within characters together, and that's what draws them together. That was the challenge of finding your place when you have a secret and when you're constantly lying to everyone -- how you act and how you interact. So yeah, that was the great challenge. The research you do and get in the mindset of he did what he believed was going to end the war quickest and sharing information was the key. I ultimately think it's terrible how John Cairncross was never convicted of his crime, whereas a man who was a hero was later convicted of his "crime" of being gay. He [Turing] was ultimately the man who ended the war early and saved 14 million lives but was convicted. But the man who committed high treason and betrayed his government walked away scot-free. It's an incredible injustice in itself.
How important is Alan Turing's sexuality to this story?
Graham Moore: I think it's tremendous. I think that the fact that Alan was a closeted gay man in England in the '30s and '40s is fundamental to his life's work. That's one of the things we always wanted to show in the film. When you read his paper on the imitation game, it proposes in a nutshell that we are only what we can convince other people that we are. We are human to the degree that we convince someone else that we are human. This is a major concept that influences artificial intelligence, philosophy, and mathematics. To have a statement like that from a closeted gay man in Britain in the '30s is remarkable. One of the things about Alan Turing that fascinates me is the way that his personal experience as a gay man so deeply influenced his work. Work that has laid the foundation for the entire world that we get to enjoy, with our hot water, computers, and Internet. To get an audience inside his head to experientially recreate that and to let people know that it's because of that that we get to enjoy a lot of the privileges we enjoy today is so fundamental to his experience and what we wanted to convey in the film.
Speaking of technological advances that owe something to Turing's work, what are your top mobile apps?
Graham Moore: I live in Los Angeles, so Waze is a big part of my daily life. It is great. It's a totally invaluable tool and changes the experience of Los Angeles.
Allen Leech: Uber, Monopoly, and Twitter.
Why Monopoly?
Allen Leech: I can't f--- beat it. It's so annoying. It's just impossible. Twitter, because I'm a big Twitterer. Uber, because I didn't have an ID when I first got to LA and didn't want to rent cars. I had to go to Burbank and got an ex-Marine in a Mercedes. With Uber, it's like a bag of Revels. You never know what you're gonna get.
