I already knew this movie would make me cry like a baby or irritate me big time. Alan Turing has been one of my heroes since I started studying computing, and the way he was treated by the same society he contributed to save a huge lesson. His memory deserved a memorable movie: Royal Pardons by the Queen of England do not reach as much social attention nowadays as they did in 1560.
And what do I find? The caricature of the socially unskilled genius, feeling less in the outside, tortured in the inside, some sort of individual with Asperger Syndrome unable to catch a hint.
I expected to find inaccuracies in the plot, of course, it is a movie, and to be entertaining, one has to give Joan Clarke a character way more central in her relation with Turing than she had in the real story in order to give Keira Knightley some interesting scenes, and they have to dramatize to a Disney level Turing's friendship with his childhood friend Christian. But this...
who is this person? It is not Alan Turing. Alan Turing was one of the most privileged minds of our time, and he was no nun Maria from "Sound of Music" when treating with people, especially with people pretending to be sharper than they were, but he was not an asocial person at all: at contrary, he could be extremely charming when he wanted to, he was quite funny when he wanted to, and he got hints better than anybody: he was gay in a world where that could get you in jail: his love life was built on hints, there was no other option.
And he was passionate, and he laughed, and he was not a stiff English gentleman (in fact, as many geniuses with too much stuff to do and going on in his mind, he was notably scruffy), and he was particularly good treating with children (which even nowadays, as he was gay, leads always to the worst suspicions in many "righteous minds"). Why have them distorted the character of Turing to this point?
Where they afraid that if they showed Turing in love with another guy public would not like it?
Did they find that the pathologically asocial genius stereotype would make a more interesting role for Cumberbatch to be given more chances to be nominated to an Oscar?
The sad truth is, Alan Turin, genius, good person, average social guy, who loved his friends and was loved by them as anybody else, was rewarded by The British Empire, for his contribution to avoid their destruction, to shame, castration, humiliation, segregation which ended in suicide, because he happened to be gay.
That is the movie that would have led me to tears, this one irritates me: "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.". They should compose a song for the movie with that title, again worth of 1960's Disney.
Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines that would who take the worthiest story to be told, the story of your hero, and then they chew it like a gum till it is marketable enough and spit it in your face.
And what do I find? The caricature of the socially unskilled genius, feeling less in the outside, tortured in the inside, some sort of individual with Asperger Syndrome unable to catch a hint.
I expected to find inaccuracies in the plot, of course, it is a movie, and to be entertaining, one has to give Joan Clarke a character way more central in her relation with Turing than she had in the real story in order to give Keira Knightley some interesting scenes, and they have to dramatize to a Disney level Turing's friendship with his childhood friend Christian. But this...
who is this person? It is not Alan Turing. Alan Turing was one of the most privileged minds of our time, and he was no nun Maria from "Sound of Music" when treating with people, especially with people pretending to be sharper than they were, but he was not an asocial person at all: at contrary, he could be extremely charming when he wanted to, he was quite funny when he wanted to, and he got hints better than anybody: he was gay in a world where that could get you in jail: his love life was built on hints, there was no other option.
And he was passionate, and he laughed, and he was not a stiff English gentleman (in fact, as many geniuses with too much stuff to do and going on in his mind, he was notably scruffy), and he was particularly good treating with children (which even nowadays, as he was gay, leads always to the worst suspicions in many "righteous minds"). Why have them distorted the character of Turing to this point?
Where they afraid that if they showed Turing in love with another guy public would not like it?
Did they find that the pathologically asocial genius stereotype would make a more interesting role for Cumberbatch to be given more chances to be nominated to an Oscar?
The sad truth is, Alan Turin, genius, good person, average social guy, who loved his friends and was loved by them as anybody else, was rewarded by The British Empire, for his contribution to avoid their destruction, to shame, castration, humiliation, segregation which ended in suicide, because he happened to be gay.
That is the movie that would have led me to tears, this one irritates me: "Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.". They should compose a song for the movie with that title, again worth of 1960's Disney.
Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines that would who take the worthiest story to be told, the story of your hero, and then they chew it like a gum till it is marketable enough and spit it in your face.
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