Each weekend a profile on a just-opened Oscar contender. Here's abstew on this weekend's new release, THE IMITATION GAME.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game
Born: Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch was born 19 July 1976 in London, England
The Role: Norwegian film director Morten Tyldum (Headhunters) makes his English-language film debut with this film starring Cumberbatch as real-life British mathematician Alan Turing, who during WWII was in charge of a team that cracked Germany's Enigma code, thus making it able for the Allies to win the war. The film jumps back and forth between three periods in Turing's life, primarily focusing on his work during the war, his early days as a lonely youth in boarding school, and his post-war conviction for gross indecency after admitting to his homosexuality.
The film had been in development for a few years since Graham Moore's script topping the annual Black List in 2011. At one point Leonardo DiCaprio was attached to star and directors such as Ron Howard and David Yates had shown interest before eventually landing with Tyldum and Cumberbatch.
Previous Brushes With Oscar: Cumberbatch appeared in last year's Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave. In fact, including that Oscar winner, four out of the five films he appeared in last year (Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and August:Osage County) received Oscar nominations. He has also had roles in two previous Best Picture nominees (2007's Atonement and 2011's War Horse) and appeared in Oscar nominated films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (which also brought him a British Independent Film Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor).
What Critics Are Saying:
Cumberbatch, as you might expect, bristles with brilliance in the role – and should be considered an Oscar frontrunner. We’ve seen him as Sherlock Holmes, so we never doubt that he packs more brainpower than anyone else on the Enigma-busting team. But, unlike the emotionally cold sleuth, Turing is a real-life historical figure, sensitive and troubled. He feels deeply and passionately for his life’s work, and tears often flood his eyes, a repressed stammer forcing itself on his lips. The performance bears so many shades of varying emotion, on the surface and deep below, that it is nothing short of miraculous.
-Thelma Adams Yahoo! Movies
In Cumberbatch’s sure hands, Turing is less a force of nature than a passionate force of logic and integrity — a bold and beautiful mind. He displays far more than an Oscar-baiting repertoire of tics and twitches. There is a bright, burning inner life in evidence, too, taking us beyond the flashbacks, flash-forwards and neat dialogue beats. It’s a tough thing to perform, but Cumberbatch aces it.
-Dan Jolin Empire
As an actor, Benedict Cumberbatch can do just about anything, but even after playing a le Carré spy, a slave master, a Star Trek villain and Julian Assange, he may never have had a role that fits him with the emotionally tailored perfection of Alan Turing.
-Owen Gleiberman BBC.com
Cumberbatch is really good as Turing. Probably no other casting was possible. He is a bit Sherlockian, but it is a confident, plausible and thought-through performance.
-Peter Bradshaw The Guardian
My Take: There's a scene early in the film where a young Alan Turing separates his carrots from his peas so that the two colors remain independent of each other. It's also a perfect metaphor for the way the film compartmentalizes the various aspects of Turing's life. Turing was a great mathematic genius, publishing theories and building the prototype for the modern-day computer before he was 30. He was also a homosexual that kept his orientation a secret at a time when admitting it was a crime. But the film seems to only bring up his homosexuality when it's convenient to the narrative (he was able to keep secrets in his work because he was hiding a personal secret of his own!), never feeling like an integral or actual part of who Turing was. And Cumberbatch's Turing is so asexual that it's hard to imagine him attracted to anything other than thoughts and work. But it's those scenes where Turing is tirelessly devoted to solving problems and brainstorming that Cumberbatch's innate intelligence and cleverness works best for the role, believably playing the smartest man in the room and one who's not above stating just that. Cumberbatch layers Turing's inner conflict throughout, providing more depth to the character than the script calls for. If only he was allowed to integrate all the aspects of Turing's personality together within the same person, to let the peas mix with the carrots, and not just feel like great pieces separated from the complete whole.
Fun Fact: Fittingly for a film called The Imitation Game, Cumberbatch has been making the rounds doing his spot-on impersonations. Here he is doing impressions of Alan Rickman, John Malkovich, and Jack Nicholson (among others). Cumberbatch has gained a reputation for his impression of Alan Rickman and even provided it for an episode of The Simpsons, where he also voiced a Prime Minister character based on Hugh Grant in Love Actually.
Probability of a Nomination: Very Likely. It seems that at this point the three men guaranteed a Best Actor nomination are Redmayne, Keaton, and Cumberbatch. He has been brewing as the next big thing for a couple years now. Missing out on a nomination last year when The Fifth Estate didn't turn out as the Oscar hopeful it was intended as, it seems like with this role, in this film - now is his time. He's also having a great year that will raise his profile, thanks to his Emmy win this year for he wildly popular Sherlock and the recent announcement of his engagement. Charming in interviews (of which he has done many already - hitting his awards campaign tour hard) and with the backing of Harvey Weinstein behind him, a nomination seems like a done deal.
"The Imitation Game" opened in NYC and LA yesterday, November 28