The Imitation Game

THE IMITATION GAME (Morten Tyldum, 2014)

When 27-year-old mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) interviews with a British military commander in 1939 for a top secret program in THE IMITATION GAME, he is anything but humble about being the man for the job. Alan has figured out that they’re trying to crack the Germans’ code machine, known as Enigma. The challenge is steep. They have an Enigma that Polish intelligence smuggled out of Berlin, but it’s determined that 159 million million million possibilities exist for the settings. Alan and his team have eighteen hours each day to break the code before it changes. More time to decipher Enigma’s messages means more lives that are lost.

Alan’s social deficiencies threaten to have him lose his team and his position at Bletchley Park, but he gradually learns how to work with the others and gain their respect. Help comes in part from Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a valued member of the decryption team who has needed to be savvy about getting along with others in a male-dominated world. Alan devises to build a machine that will break every message every day instantly. As smart as he and his fellow codebreakers are, they face numerous setbacks, not to mention pressure from higher-ups because of the investment in their work that has yet to yield anything productive.

At first Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Turing puts this real life person on the verge of appearing as a buttoned-up Sheldon Cooper from THE BIG BANG THEORY. He’s the incredible genius with little comprehension of or need for social niceties. Thankfully his initial ignorance and arrogance is dialed back as the character acclimates to the high stakes matter at hand. Think more of the actor’s version of Sherlock Holmes than a sitcom brainiac. Cumberbatch does well at seeming like someone often lost in his head. Although he approaches interactions like equations to be solved, he shows how he makes the strategy work for him in most instances.

THE IMITATION GAME is most poignant regarding the importance of keeping secrets, although it’s not so much in relation to Turing’s homosexuality, which was considered criminal in his lifetime. Once he and his team cracked Enigma’s code, decision makers had to be selective about how they used it so that the Germans wouldn’t know the Allies had access to the messages being sent. That withholding meant deaths, although doing so was in service of preventing a greater number of them.

With its important subject, handsome MASTERPIECE THEATRE-like production design, and British accents, THE IMITATION GAME resembles an awards-collecting machine, which isn’t to dismiss it. THE IMITATION GAME is an entertaining piece of fictionalized history that crackles with the excitement of watching intelligent people and a primitive device achieve something considered impossible. Director Morten Tyldum smoothly guides developments along, although some war montages and end title cards assume the audience’s historical knowledge is so low that it feels a little condescending. The film can be so insistent to trumpet its own import and prestige that it has to underline some things too much. Nevertheless, THE IMITATION GAME provides an involving look at the greatness human minds in cooperation can achieve.

Grade: B

Begin Again

BEGIN AGAIN (John Carney, 2013)

When BEGIN AGAIN premiered at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, it was called CAN A SONG SAVE YOUR LIFE? The melodramatic title has been changed to something more ordinary, yet writer-director John Carney still presses viewers to consider the question even if it is no longer the film’s name. The implied answer to the film’s previous title is yes, absolutely yes. While BEGIN AGAIN may come off as naïve and Pollyana-ish regarding the realities of the business side of music, its enthusiasm for the power of a song is hard to deny.

As in Carney’s film ONCE, the two main characters are brought together through music. Gretta (Keira Knightley) and Dan (Mark Ruffalo) are at low points in their lives when their paths cross. She’s fresh off leaving her longtime boyfriend and songwriting partner Dave (Adam Levine), whose first taste of success leads him to cheat on her. Dan is not coping well with the year-long separation from Miriam (Catherine Keener), his wife of eighteen years, and their teenage daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld). Adding to his troubles, he gets fired from the independent record label he co-founded. Both are at a New York City club’s open mic night when Gretta’s friend Steve (James Corden) pesters her into taking the stage to play one of her songs. While the crowd doesn’t seem especially won over, Dan believes that he hears something special.

Thinking she may be his ticket to getting his job back, Dan approaches Gretta expecting to impress her with his position in the industry. At first she rejects his offer to mold her into another artist in the hit-making machine, but after a night of reflection Gretta decides that she has nothing to lose by auditioning for Dan’s former partner Saul (Mos Def). Although Saul declines to sign her, Dan is undeterred and proposes using a laptop to self-record an album with Gretta performing outside at locations around the city. Gretta values authenticity in music, so the idea of working on a passion project in this manner is irresistible.

BEGIN AGAIN understands the role music can play in daily life. It expresses one’s aggravations and happiness and can be a refuge from a bad day or the mundanity of driving a car for hours. Dan talks about how banal moments become pregnant with meaning when music scores them. The film backs him up when Dan and Gretta stroll through Times Square listening to Frank Sinatra singing “Luck Be a Lady” through a splitter connected to a phone. This ordinary walk through the big city looks and sounds like the most magical thing to do ever. BEGIN AGAIN is foremost about the joy of music, but it makes for a beautiful love letter to New York too. With all apologies to THEY CAME TOGETHER, the city is a character and a charming one at that for Knightley in her simple but cute wardrobe and a fashionably scruffy Ruffalo to explore.

The tuneful songs by Gregg Alexander stick in the ear without seeming so accomplished as to exceed the capability of an undiscovered talent. BEGIN AGAIN’s perception of the industry, even in its weakened state, is less credible. Sure, it’s amusing to note how smarmy label executives can be and how misguided their ideas are for retaining paying customers. Levine makes for a funny sellout whose waywardness can be measured by the amount of facial hair he grows. Maybe Dan’s dismissal of the demos, which more or less sound like today’s pop hits, is meant to show he’s out of touch, although it seems like rockist cheap shots at highly engineered and fussed over songs. Even with Gretta’s standard singer-songwriter fare being jazzed up through its means of production, her music hardly seems like the kind of thing to send shockwaves through the charts or the business. Her assertion that people want authenticity sounds misguided, especially when examining the current bestsellers, and her resistance to a contract and publicity, as if she’s Jandek, defines protesting too much for someone working in the system. BEGIN AGAIN has insiders believing they are outsiders, so it’s better served by celebrating music than critiquing the industry.

Knightley and Ruffalo have a nice, relaxed chemistry suggestive of romantic undercurrents, although Carney doesn’t push the matter too intensely. Their attraction is based more in sharing an emotionally vulnerable time in their lives than physical magnetism. Their potential salvations are meant to come through the songs, not each other, and BEGIN AGAIN hums with the excitement of creative collaboration and the exuberant mystery born out of music and lyrics.

Grade: B

Anna Karenina

ANNA KARENINA (Joe Wright, 2012)

ANNA KARENINA begins in 1847 imperial Russia with Anna (Keira Knightley), wife of government official Count Alexei Karenin (Jude Law), traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow to comfort her sister-in-law Dolly (Kelly Macdonald) for the infidelity of her brother, Prince Stepan “Stiva” Oblonsky (Matthew Macfadyen).  While Anna pleads with Dolly to forgive Stiva, something she suggests her relative must do to regain her own happiness as much as anything, the promise of unspoiled love eases the tension in the home.  Dolly’s 18-year-old sister Princess Ekaterina (Alicia Vikander), otherwise known as Kitty, has two suitors.  In anticipation of rich cavalry officer Count Alexei Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) asking for her hand to be his wife, Kitty declines the proposal of Stiva’s friend Konstantin Levin (Domhnall Gleeson).

The prospect of Kitty and Vronsky marrying is dashed when he and Anna unexpectedly connect with an animal magnetism that shocks and thrills her.  Although the scandalous affair taints Anna in society’s view and threatens to destroy her, with Vronsky she finds the passion that has been lacking in her relationship with Karenin.  In response, her husband approaches Anna’s relationship with Vronsky as if it is a policy matter. Karenin shares his perspective and a clear set of consequences if she is to continue it.  

Director Joe Wright’s entry to the film world came with his fresh cinematic treatment of PRIDE & PREJUDICE.  The Jane Austen novel seemed as though it had been adapted to death by the time of Wright’s version, but he lent immediacy to the period piece with modern touches and filmmaking verve.  ANNA KARENINA is another giant of the literary world that would seem to invite a staid, classical style, yet once again the director’s bold vision shakes up what might have otherwise been a fusty filming of the canon.

In their version of ANNA KARENINA Wright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard deliver an audacious adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s classic of Russian literature.  Much of the realist fiction’s action--everything set in cities--is transposed to the artificial confines of a theater.  Scenery and costume changes occur on camera in elaborately choreographed transitions.  Characters wander into the wings, the auditorium, and above the stage. With nothing incapable of being put on view, the visual strategy makes plain the hypocrisy between the public and private as well as the male and female.  It also pokes fun at urban progress, such as the lengthy tracking shot punctuated with the delivery of an ashtray.

Yet for all of the flashy staging indebted to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, gorgeous cinematography, and sumptuous production design, ANNA KARENINA relies on small, human gestures to convey the depth of feeling and judgment.  Emotional expression tends to be clipped and indirect, with much being communicated through glances and the subtlest of movements.  

Paced like a surging locomotive, ANNA KARENINA plays like the ultimate CliffsNotes, which is both testament to Stoppard’s exceptional adaptation and abridgement of Tolstoy’s novel and acknowledgment of the film’s somewhat superficial center.  Anna’s choice to sacrifice everything for Vronsky merits more inspection but is shortchanged for the sake of expediency.  Even with portions rendered in shorthand, ANNA KARENINA is a stylistic triumph in its exploration of the collisions between love and passion, the rational and irrational, and the moral and sinful.     

Grade: B+

Never Let Me Go

NEVER LET ME GO (Mark Romanek, 2010)

NEVER LET ME GO follows the lives of friends Kathy H. (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield), and Ruth (Keira Knightley), who grew up together at Hailsham, a boarding school for special children like them. The film begins in 1978 with them as children and concludes in 1994 with the three as adults trying to make sense of the world. Kathy is the pensive one of the group, and her thoughts and observations provide the narration to NEVER LET ME GO. To say much more about the veiled truths in the plot would ruin the experience of discovering them.

The rich subtext in NEVER LET ME GO wouldn’t mean anything without the care given to the story. Screenwriter Alex Garland’s skillful adaptation of the fantastic Kazuo Ishiguro novel reveals the secret about these characters basically from the outset, yet the underlying science fiction aspect is treated as a canvas for the relationships and emotional turmoil instead of being the plot’s main focus.

NEVER LET ME GO can be about the soul, technological innovation, media messaging, or any number of things beyond what the plot spells out. While the characters are vessels for various interpretations of their existential crises, the main story regarding love and purpose plays well enough on its own.

NEVER LET ME GO also digs into the foundation of our beliefs and the astronomical impact of how we often accept unquestioningly what we are taught and what we view, especially as children. The carefully chosen euphemisms convey concepts with large implications for the kids, yet it is through such words that passivity is branded into them. Director Mark Romanek and cinematographer Adam Kimmel employ a nostalgic and otherworldly visual sensibility to evoke the golden years of innocence and ignorance. The film looks and feels like beautiful heartbreak.

Grade: A

Atonement

ATONEMENT (Joe Wright, 2007)

For 13-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), an overactive imagination, a busybody's curiosity, and a youthful misunderstanding of what she observes are all she needs to commit a sin that will haunt her forever in ATONEMENT.

Like most adolescents Briony is a little too pleased with herself and harbors a crush on a young man, but these are not crimes. One afternoon she spots housekeeper's son Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the object of her infatuation, in what appears to be a confrontation with her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley).

Later Briony's nosiness gets the better of her when she tears open a note Robbie asks her to give to Cecilia. He mistakenly encloses a lewd message instead of the more formal letter of affection he handwrote. For a girl in 1935 England, the contents are positively shocking. As if all this isn't plenty for one day, Briony stumbles across Robbie and Cecilia making love before dinner.

By this point Briony is convinced that Robbie is a sex maniac. When she comes upon an adult male assaulting her cousin Lola (Juno Temple) in the shadows, she incorrectly believes that Robbie must be the offender. Her eyewitness account is all that is needed for him to be hauled to prison.

Robbie and Cecilia will not meet again until three and a half years later. She is a nurse tending to the war's wounded. He has agreed to enlist as an army private stationed in northern France rather than remain in jail. Their passion is undiminished, and the possibility of a life together after World War II exists. Meanwhile, Briony (Romola Garai) has bypassed university to be a nurse too. It's her way of doing penance for the grievous error she now realizes she made, although news of this sacrifice hardly redeems her in Robbie and Cecilia's eyes.

In his first two feature films, ATONEMENT and his marvelous 2005 adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, director Joe Wright has demonstrated a remarkable ability to tell stories using the entire cinematic language. He's particularly keen at utilizing sound to express key qualities. The buzzing bee, which eventually draws Briony's attention to Robbie and Cecilia by the fountain, is heard early in the scene as a hint of her mounting frustration. The repetitive clacking of a typewriter, the most important sound in ATONEMENT, is matched with a flickering light, an indication of the writer's ability to illuminate and obscure the truth. The sound design also heightens the smallest noises, like the flicking of a lighter or tapping of an envelope, to make the environment feel alive.

Wright loves the nuance of non-verbal communication and what it reveals about relationships and emotions that dialogue does less eloquently. This is a tactile film, so it follows that he is drawn to close-ups of hands. Robbie's reaction when Cecilia gently places her hand atop his while his other hand stirs a cup of tea is as expressive as a close-up of their faces could have been. Considering Wright's fondness for hand shots, it is not surprising that one of the most telling signs of Briony's long-held guilt is the furious scrubbing she gives hers at the hospital.

Non-verbal cues are not always properly read, though. Briony's declining opinion of Robbie hinges on misinterpreting the gestures, posture, and expressions in the disagreement she sees from her bedroom window. He appears commanding and angry from her vantage point, but when the scene replays closer to the action, Robbie's manner and Cecilia's glare reflect the intensity of their repressed feelings for each other.

All this focus on the details is not to ignore the cast's stellar performances. The revelation is Ronan in her first major film role. She plays Briony's blind self-confidence and self-righteousness as the product of her age and upbringing. Certainly it doesn't mean that the character is blameless or sympathetic. Briony is a complex role, and Ronan challenges our willingness to forgive her. Also worth noting is the brief appearance Vanessa Redgrave makes in the devastating coda. Wright just has to fix the camera on her and let the veteran actress do the rest.

From the precise sound design to the sprawling tracking shot of the evacuation to Dunkirk, Wright attends to the small and the large with a masterful touch. ATONEMENT is an exquisitely crafted film bursting with the possibilities that cinema has to offer.

Grade: A