Benedict Cumberbatch decodes Alan Turing in Imitation Game which opens in UAE theatres

With characters like Sherlock Holmes, Julian Assange and Stephen Hawking, Benedict Cumberbatch has accumulated a filmography littered with high IQs.
Characters of analytical prowess and fast-deducting intellect have made Cumberbatch something like the ultimate quicksilver mind of the digital age. No actor has made computation sexier.
Cumberbatch, relaxing in a Toronto hotel room, quickly points out that he has — like his spineless plantation owner of 12 Years a Slave or his painfully shy son in August: Osage County — played some “pretty dull, ordinary” people: “Let’s say us. I’ve done us, version of me and you,” he says.
And yet Cumberbatch is clearly drawn to highly complex, real-life characters under extraordinary circumstances — roles that demand technical preparation (an accent, a stammer), considerable biographical research and a precision of approach. Puzzles to be solved.
“Maybe that’s a fair one,” he says, turning over the idea. “Maybe I do. I think for the reasons people are attracted to those characters, as well. You can never fully understand them. There’s always a certain amount of enigma or mystery to them.”

Code breaker
Cumberbatch’s latest riddle is Alan Turing, a hugely important figure to World War II code-breaking and a computer science pioneer. The Imitation Game, which opens in UAE theatres this weekend, is about how Turing and others at Britain’s Bletchley Park solved the seemingly unbreakable Enigma code used by the Germans throughout WWII. Winston Churchill said Turing made the single greatest contribution to the war, but his achievement wasn’t widely recognised until recently, when the code-breaker’s work was declassified.
“Considering all of that, why the (expletive) isn’t he on the front cover of every school history textbook?” says Cumberbatch. “He’s a properly important figure in our culture.”
The Imitation Game is only partly a traditional wartime thriller. It’s also a tragedy of social close-mindedness. Turing was gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal in Britain. He was convicted of indecency in 1952 and then chemically castrated. Two years later, just 41, he killed himself by eating a cyanide-laced apple (though there remains some debate about his intentions).
“I see somebody who was tragically damaged and continually battered by an intolerant, non-understanding world — the very world he was trying to save and liberate from fascism,” says Cumberbatch.
The Imitation Game, directed by Norwegian filmmaker Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore, is a kind of ode to outsiders. Cumberbatch’s Turing isn’t just different because of his sexuality, he’s utterly anti-social. Rarely making eye contact, etiquette disinterested the single-minded Turing. “I don’t care what’s normal,” he says in the movie.
His Bletchley collaborators also included Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley), a rare female in that world. Knightley says the film “is about trying to celebrate differences because of the tragedies that can occur when you destroy the people who aren’t like you.”
The film’s mix of historical drama with contemporary resonance has won it acclaim on the festival circuit and positioned it as an Oscar contender. Especially lauded has been Cumberbatch’s depiction of a mathematical mind wracked by repression.
“He can play so many emotions at the same time. There’s strength and vulnerability. There’s arrogance and there’s this lonely boy,” says Tyldum. “It’s not every actor that can play a genius.”
Keeping it simple
Knightley, a friend of Cumberbatch’s since the two worked together on Atonement, calls him “the sort of actor who never tries to simplify anything.”
“If it’s a complex person, he wants to dive into all the complexities and try to get all the nuances out,” Knightley says. “You completely believe him in any of these roles, whether it’s Assange, Stephen Hawking, whoever. He’s very intelligent, but he’s got a curiosity you can see and it sort of burns through his performances.”
Cumberbatch, however, makes no claim to cleverness. Of Sherlock, he credits its writer: “Steven Moffat is the brain. I just say it fast.”
With no footage to draw from for Turing’s manner and speech, Cumberbatch met with his relatives. The actor began many of his days jogging. (Turing was an elite runner.) And he worked at crafting a plausible stutter for the famously awkward mathematician. Still, playing a man of such brainpower was challenging.
“I’m not stupid but I’m not that smart. So I can at least lend something of that within the performance, like maybe the alacrity of thought, making fast connections,” says Cumberbatch. “But when you actually start talking about the language he used to get to those stunning conclusions, you might as well ask me to write my name in Mandarin.”
After The Imitation Game, the 38-year-old Brit, who recently announced his engagement to Sophie Hunter, is ready for a simpler equation.
“I’ve done evil. I’ve done good. I’ve done smart,” says Cumberbatch. “I haven’t done much sexy, sexy, really. I know Sherlock’s some people’s cup of tea. I’d like to do a romantic comedy. I really would.”
No hurry to tie the knot
Benedict Cumberbatch is not in a hurry to marry fiancee Sophie Hunter.
Cumberbatch made this confession to popsugar.com, reports dailymail.co.uk.
When asked about his plans to marry, the star said: “One thing at a time. I’m playing Sherlock now, just about to start, so my main focus is going to be on that.”
The British actor was joined by his fiancee, to whom he popped the question with a diamond ring in late 2014, at the red carpet for the Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 3.
Cumberbatch was at the film gala to receive the ensemble performance award with a few of his The Imitation Game co-stars.
The Imitation Game scores huge debut
By mimicking the release strategy of The King’s Speech and The Artist, The Imitation Game is poised to become one of the year’s few indie success stories. The best picture contender is receiving the full Harvey Weinstein treatment, with the Weinstein Company chief clearly viewing the biopic as his ticket to the Oscars this time around.
“We’ll follow the pattern laid out with The King’s Speech, The Artist and pictures like that and move slowly and deliberately,” said Erik Lomis, distribution chief for the Weinstein Company.
The film earned $482,000 in just four New York and Los Angeles theaters for a per-screen average of $120,518. That’s actually better than the $72,590 that The Artist averaged and the $88,863 that The King’s Speech averaged when they debuted on the same number of screens.
“Few distributors are better at nurturing Oscar contenders than the Weinstein Company,” said Phil Contrino, vice president and chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “They’re masters at starting slow and making sure they build momentum.”
The Imitation Game has benefited from glossy magazine spreads in New York and the New York Times Magazine, as well as a cover story in Time tied to its “genius issue.” The presence of Benedict Cumberbatch, the star of the BBC’s Sherlock who has bloomed into an unlikely sex symbol, has also helped broaden the film’s appeal. The English actor hasn’t had a bigscreen hit to call his own after last year’s Julian Assange examination, The Fifth Estate, crumbled at multiplexes, but he’s got an avid fanbase of women and men, who may find Cumberbatch’s latest prickly genius more to their liking.
“Benedict brings a lot to the table,” said Lomis. “This isn’t just a movie that plays old. I’m not saying it plays young, but it plays younger, and that will increase as word of mouth builds.”
The change of seasons could help. “This is the time of year when adults want to see Oscar contenders, and this movie has got plenty of buzz,” said Contrino. Turing’s role in breaking the Nazis’ Enigma code and seminal contributions to computer science are helping the film draw in gadget lovers and Silicon Valley types.
The tragic end of his life, which saw him endure a court-ordered chemical castration after he was arrested for homosexual acts, has made him a gay rights martyr — a status that brings in a different audience. “This is a picture that appeals on many levels,” said Lomis. “It brings in older, sophisticated audiences, and because of the nature of the film, it appeals to tech heads and gay audiences. It has a lot going for it.”