FILM 1294: THE IMITATION GAME
TRIVIA: Winston Churchill stated
that Turing made the single greatest contribution in Britain's war effort.
Benedict Cumberbatch
confessed that in one of the final scenes of the film he couldn't stop crying
and had a breakdown. It was, as he said, "being an actor or a person that
had grown incredibly fond of the character and thinking what he had suffered
and how that had affected him."
On 27 November 2014, ahead of the
film's US release, The New York Times reprinted the original 1942 crossword puzzle
from The Daily Telegraph used in recruiting code breakers at Bletchley Park
during World War II. Entrants who solve the puzzle can mail in their results
for a chance to win a trip for two to London and a tour of the famous Bletchley
Park facilities.
In an interview with USA Today, Benedict Cumberbatch said
of Turing's Royal Pardon, "The only person who should be pardoning anybody
is him (Turing). Hopefully, the film will bring to the fore what an extraordinary
human being he was and how appalling (his treatment by the government was).
It's a really shameful, disgraceful part of our history."
Framed tortoise shells are seen
hanging on the walls of Turing's home. This is an allusion to his later work
showing that the patterns on tortoise shells, despite their apparent complexity
(and beauty), can come about from a rather simple set of rules or instructions,
i.e. the underlying genetic code. This convinced Turing that exceedingly
complex biological entities can stem from simple programs, i.e. from simple
changes in the DNA. This insight has profound implications for evolution,
especially to those arguments asserting that the complexity of life could not
have arisen by chance alone.
