I have an intention to check the facts of every "based on true story" movie after watching it! I am pretty critical of what Hollywood calls based on a true story. I thought I'd make a series of articles out of it, beginning with The Imitation Game and some of the problems it has with historical accuracy.
Spoiler Alert - you should watch the movie first! You can watch it on Netflix. Then come back to my article to check how many historical errors I have found out! It is an excellent movie, I must admit it! But after you've seen it, you really should come back here and read this because there are some pretty bad problems with it.
It's a must-watch movie - if you can ignore historical mistakes
Before talking about the wrong things, let me tell about some good sides at first. This was a great movie, probably one of my favorite WWII movies I've ever seen if you ignore historical accuracy.
I love how they were able to create a sense of suspense about the war with virtually no filming of actual battle scenes. It's also a very tragic movie. Alan Turing contributed immensely to the allied victory, which was crucial to the foundation of computer science, and it's just so sad to see things end up for him the way they did.
And hats off to Benedict Cumberbatch for his extraordinary acting. I am a HUGE fan of Benedict Cumberbatch, and he never fails to impress me every time I think he cannot possibly improve, he does. It is a fantastic movie, and everyone should watch it. Of course, if you can ignore the historical aspects.
Salute to the real hero Alan Turing as well! It just kills me that such a genius was torn apart because he was a homosexual, and I mean, he saved millions of lives and ended up taking his own life.
Now let's find out some historical errors -
The film portrays the love of a boy in boarding school as mutual, wherein all likelihood it wasn't. We don't know for sure, but that is a giant leap when nobody has expressed it.
The whole scenario with Joan Clarke is just flat-out wrong. Before the war in Cambridge, she was already working at Bletchley before Turing started there.
She was not discovered by Turing and secretly brought to the project; instead, Clarke was sent to the task when her supervisor found her math skills.
After that, their relationship ever came to be, and their relationship was never as strong as shown. The day after he proposed to her, he told her of his homosexuality. Their relationships breakup of sorts is not pictured correctly either. They grew apart after the revelation, not due to any outside circumstances.
Turing did not solely write to Churchill, and those letters are a matter of public record now, and they are signed by a few other people on the team.
The machine that is named Christopher in the movie was actually called "Bamba" like a song! Turing did not push its creation against the will of his team either instead, the machine was based on the design of a Polish one from a few years prior, and it was a group effort.
Turing's brilliance was not the design but the modification for beating the Enigma machine. The decision to withhold information was never rested upon Hut 18, and the superiors were in charge of that.
Furthermore, the whole brother dying thing is just grossly false that didn't happen in the least, and Peter Hilton did not even begin working with Turing until after the machine had broken enigma.
John Cairncross, the Soviet spy, did work at Bletchley Park, but not with Turing. They had no contact whatsoever, and their interplay is altogether fabricated.
Turing did write Clarke letters and even tried to rekindle the relationship at one point during the war, but she never revisited him.
These are the major mistakes that I found in the movie. If you look closely and check Wiki and other resources, you may find more errors! I actually like this movie a lot, but Hollywood always has a way of just ruining everything. I don't know why you call it "True Story" while it's not even at least 50% true!
If you can ignore these facts, The Imitation Game is really Brilliant, and you should watch it with friends and family!
The Imitation Game trailer -
You can also check for more facts about The Imitation Game - Click Here