The Imitation Game has set off a fair amount of debate both about whether it’s a good movie – reviews have differed starkly on whether it’s brilliant or dreadful – and also on how it deals with Alan Turing’s sexuality.
The latter has become a particularly prominent issue as for many people the fact Turing was gay is a vital part of his story. Having been the brains behind deciphering German codes and helping shorten the Second World War by two years, a few years later he was prosecuted for being gay, forced to be chemically castrated (to avoid prison), shunned by the establishment and then he killed himself. It’s a powerful indictment of the homophobia and prejudice of the recent past, where people could be so blinded by bigotry that they’d destroy a man who could have given so much more to the human race.
However while the movie certainly acknowledges Turing’s sexuality, it is a little shy about the realities of that and what he actually had to deal with as a gay man in the UK in the 1940s and 1950s.
Benedict Cumberbatch has already defended the movie’s depiction of Turing’s sexuality, saying “There is no heterosexuality expressed in the film. So what we show in his behaviour is sadly true to his story. He had to suppress his sexuality, make it private, make it something secret.”
Now it’s fellow Imitation Game actor Matthew Goode’s turn to defend the movie and the lack of gay sex within it. Talking to Huffpo, he says, “Some people will think it’s a shame there was no suggestion or depiction of [the sex life of] Alan Turing, who is a gay icon because of what he went through and what happened in [1954] where he took his own life. But I think, in some ways, to do this man’s story [and include his sex life], it would do him a slight disservice because he was so private. No one at Bletchley Park knew that he was a homosexual, so therefore the film is merely mirroring what was going on in his own life. I know that may seem cowardly … but to show a scene of him having sex with another man without any knowledge or the truth in it, I think could have been very risky. I mean, there will always be a ‘you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t,’ but I’m really glad we didn’t.”
However what both Goode and Cumberbatch say slightly misses the point. Yes Turing was hidden and private – and many suggest he didn’t have huge amounts of sex anyway – but a vital part of his story is that he was forced to be that way, as evidenced by what happened when the authorities found out the truth. The film does somewhat address that, but there is still a shyness which it’s difficult not to interpret more as a concern about keeping the film palatable to a mainstream audience (particularly because it’s the sort of film that will attract an older audience) than about being fully true to Turing himself and the struggle he faced.
It’s also true that both actor seem to assume the only way to fully show Turing’s sexuality is with a full-on gay sex scenes, which wouldn’t really have been necessary, just a stronger sense that the mathematician and computing pioneer was gay in reality (and it was an intrinsic part of him) not just in theory.
You can watch Goode’s full Huffpo live chat about The Imitation Game below.
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