I saw it last week. I had been anticipating the movie for a while because I'm very interested in Alan Turing. I thought that the movie was great.
Me too ^^ I thought it was great, and Benedict Cumberbatch was amazing! Even though I was already very familiar with his story, I still was upset almost to the point of crying at the end. And it (weirdly?) made me feel like it's even more important for me now to come out of the closet and come to terms with who I am...
It's very good and enjoyable, and it tells a story that should be very well known. (Everyone on this website ought to know who Turing was. He was gay, and arguably did more than anyone to bring WWII to its conclusion, shortening it by years and saving millions of lives. He also essentially invented the computer, was one of the most important mathematicians of the 20thC and possibly the most important logician since Aristotle.) It does lay out its message pretty thickly, but that's more than justifiable in the circumstances. Very well acted. There was some controversy about Keira Knightley's role, as her character was made into a much bigger part of Turing's life than she was in reality. I don't think that was out of coyness, but just because compositionally they thought it would work better if the central cast wasn't entirely male. The boy who plays Young Turing was brilliant as well. Historically, there's a lot there that's a bit dodgy. There are several subplots that seem implausible and only there to add to dramatic tension, and indeed they weren't from reality. The circumstances of his arrest are very wrong, and there's a fictional section about a Communist spy who Turing almost certainly never met. Spoiler That section's also troubling as we see Turing being blackmailed, which would have been seen as treason. A lot of my straight friends with no particular interest in LGBT rights went to see it, which is great, and I gather that in the US it was one of the best performing films of the year in terms of box office takings per screening, which is often taken as a good measure of how well a non-blockbuster is being received. (Actually another British film that did really well in the US by the same measure this year is Belle, a true story about a mixed race girl raised in an aristocratic family in the 18thC, which given that it's largely about a "forbidden" interracial relationship, makes for an interesting comparison with TIG.) But yes, I'd definitely recommend the film, especially to people on this website, and especially to people who don't know his story. I've been waving the flag for Turing for years, and he makes for a great role model and cause célèbre. What follows is a spoiler only for people who don't know anything about the end of the real Turing's life. Spoiler I'm not especially comfortable with the fact that he was "pardoned", because that implies that we've forgiven him. As Benedict Cumberbatch said: “The only person who should be [doing the] forgiving is Turing, and he can’t because we killed him."
