Turing Movie a Fake?

[Bluray2]

Is it?

 

BR2

 

http://outhistory.org/blog/movie-about-alan-turing-turns-out-to-be-big-fake/

[AdamSmith]

Here's a link to the Christian Caryl article that I originally posted here on 12-30-2014 and that, for whatever reason, is not behind the firewall referenced in the above-linked story. Read and judge for yourself:

 

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/

[corndog]

No, it is not a fake. It is a real movie.

 

It is not a documentary, it is a drama based on a real person and real events.

[Tonyko]

It is not a documentary, it is a drama based on a real person and real events.

 

Exactly :-) FIFTY percent of Oliver Stone's JFK is hogwash, but who wants to see a movie confirming that all boring six zillion volumes of The Warren Report published 50 years ago got it right lol? It's Dramatic License, it's entertainment, it's "based" in reality then re-written to make it more interesting. (Like The Real Housewives etc etc :-) It was a brilliant Play I was lucky to see, Breaking The Code with Derek Jacobi many years ago, and anyone like me who wanted the REAL story could read the book like I did. But if you're searching for factual truth in a FILM version of any story, well, good luck lol. PS: if you DON'T want any bubbles burst, then don't take "The Sound Of Music" tour in Austria, Maria was a FAR from attractive heavy set chick who never planned to be a nun who brow beat the kids into singing religous choral songs to pay the bills and The Baron drank and rarely worked and they fled the Nazi's in a very comfortable train to Switzerland :-)

* (I do this for a living btw, I know from where I speak lol)

[Juan Vancouver]

No, it is not a fake. It is a real movie.

 

It is not a documentary, it is a drama based on a real person and real events.

 

Nailed it.

 

Foxcatcher and A Beautiful Mind are not fakes, although inaccurate and with added drama to make them watchable, they are based on real events, real people.

 

It's not a documentary. It's a movie.

 

I can't think of a single historical based movie that is accurate, and they shouldn't be.

 

I for one, am perfectly fine with the liberties taken. God, imagine the bashing Cucumberpatch would have suffered if his Turing portrayal had not been "gay enough"!

 

Movies are made for not very intelligent people, and as such, they have to make adjustments that will help move the plot along.

[AdamSmith]

Well, sure, it's an entertainment piece and so forth. But I think the critics have a point that the flick was a weakly imagined work compared with what it could have been if the makers had been up to dramatizing something closer to the real Turing. And that it pandered to audiences in several ways, for example as Caryl says in the essay linked above:

 

...In perhaps the most bitter irony of all, the filmmakers have managed to transform the real Turing, vivacious and forceful, into just the sort of mythological gay man, whiney and weak, that homophobes love to hate.

 

This is indicative of the bad faith underlying the whole enterprise, which is desperate to put Turing in the role of a gay liberation totem but can’t bring itself to show him kissing another man—something he did frequently, and with gusto. And it most definitely doesn’t show him cruising New York’s gay bars, or popping off on a saucy vacation to one of the less reputable of the Greek islands. The Imitation Game is a film that

its gay men decorously disembodied...

[+ Charlie]

Well, sure, it's an entertainment piece and so forth. But I think the critics have a point that the flick was a weakly imagined work compared with what it could have been if the makers had been up to dramatizing something closer to the real Turing. And that it pandered to audiences in several ways, for example as Caryl says in the essay linked above:

 

...In perhaps the most bitter irony of all, the filmmakers have managed to transform the real Turing, vivacious and forceful, into just the sort of mythological gay man, whiney and weak, that homophobes love to hate.

 

This is indicative of the bad faith underlying the whole enterprise, which is desperate to put Turing in the role of a gay liberation totem but can’t bring itself to show him kissing another man—something he did frequently, and with gusto. And it most definitely doesn’t show him cruising New York’s gay bars, or popping off on a saucy vacation to one of the less reputable of the Greek islands. The Imitation Game is a film that

its gay men decorously disembodied...

If Turing were alive today, it sounds like he could be a regular poster on this site.

[Lookin]

Here's a link to the Christian Caryl article that I originally posted here on 12-30-2014 and that, for whatever reason, is not behind the firewall referenced in the above-linked story. Read and judge for yourself:

 

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/dec/19/poor-imitation-alan-turing/

 

Thanks for the repost. http://www.boytoy.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/thumbsup.png I missed it first time, and it's a good take on the film's missed opportunities.

 

I saw The Imitation Game last week, a quarter-century after reading Hodges' biography, and, even after all that time, was struck by the things the film glossed over and the things it overstated.

 

Still, given that much of Turing's life was hidden by secrecy - whether state, social, or psychological - the film reminds me of one of those singing dog stories: not that the dog sings especially well, but that it sings at all.

 

The good news is that there's still an opening wide as a woofter's woo for a really good biopic of Turing. http://www.boytoy.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif

[mike carey]

I know it's a bump of sorts, but to link to the tragedy that was Alan Turing's life and death.

http://www.companyofmen.org/threads/the-imitation-game-honoring-alan-turings-memory-the-man-who-saved-britain-in-ww2.101543/#post-940205

 

On the 104th anniversary of his birth,

Alan Turing—a pioneer of modern computing—was born #onthisday 1912 http://econ.st/28IBFw3

 

[+ bigjoey]

It always amazes me that people see a historical drama film and assume it is a true portrait of the people shown. All such movies should carry a warning. By the same token, documentaries are often "point-of-view" films and should be labeled as such (think Michael Moore films).

[mike carey]

I was using this thread as a hook to consider Alan Turing, not as a comment on the film. His fate as a victim of homophobia in his age is incontestible.

[+ glennnn]

Agreed! A film, (or a play or a novel) is not an historical record. It has to be rearranged to include the drama of the obligatory "aha" scene, a death scene, some danger, some romance, etc, etc. Thus has it ever been so. Consider "Yankee Doodle Dandy" or "The Life of Madame Curie" which are largely invention. This doesn't always produce the desired artistic result.

 

"Night and Day", a film of the life of our gay brother, Cole Porter, starring the great Cary Grant, is hysterically boring and complete fiction. He spends 30 years courting Alexis Smith and never touches her. He just shrugs, and looks sad, which I guess is the signal he is gay. The real Porter's life is still open for a much more truthful retelling in film and would make a good one. Most lives are pretty boring, even to those living them, much less to an observer.

[+ nycman]

.....PS: if you DON'T want any bubbles burst, then don't take "The Sound Of Music" tour in Austria, Maria was a FAR from attractive heavy set chick who never planned to be a nun who brow beat the kids into singing religous choral songs to pay the bills and The Baron drank and rarely worked and they fled the Nazi's in a very comfortable train to Switzerland

* (I do this for a living btw, I know from where I speak lol)

 

You're a ugly fat nun who forces children to sing religious choral songs?

 

And I though my job sucked.....grin

[Tonyko]

Hmmmm woulda' been better if my quote hadn't included the Baron :-) :-)

*I write FICTION for a living :-)

[+ Gar1eth]

Hmmmm woulda' been better if my quote hadn't included the Baron :)

*I write FICTION for a living

 

The question being is your fiction known as fiction or is it meant to be taken for truth?

 

Gman

[marylander1940]

No, it is not a fake. It is a real movie.

 

It is not a documentary, it is a drama based on a real person and real events.

 

Exactly, it's called artistic license for a reason.

 

[rvwnsd]

No, it is not a fake. It is a real movie.

 

It is not a documentary, it is a drama based on a real person and real events.

I can't imagine how dull watching a completely factual movie would be.