Imitation Frames

Testing Turing vs Trinity

I wrote recently about my worries over the new Oppenheimer movie and Nolan’s more conservative leanings that might lead to a questionable take on the outcomes of the “great man’s” designs. My fears were confirmed though not to the extent I thought they would be. There was an (eventual) unequivocal condemnation of nuclear weapons but, much like the man himself, the film never outright said Oppenheimer was wrong for what he did. As I predicted it leaned heavily on the subjectivity of the narrative so that ‘Oppie’ never says he was wrong for making the bomb and even metaphorically has his hands washed by Gary Oldman’s high camp impression of President Truman. Nolan has said that he doesn’t think a didactic approach would work and that it is better to use art to “ask questions”. Unfortunately this just results in the film itself leaving those question unanswered, which, conveniently, means it can appeal to those who are pro-nukes and those who are anti-nukes, or even someone who is indifferent to nukes (if such a person exists). Ignoring this main contention and the fact the movie, even more questionably perhaps, is abundant in its support of the military industrial complex, Oppenheimer is a great work. Or rather, there is a great work in there. It is an hour and a half too long but the more expressionist, abstract stuff would have made for a much more haunting and appropriately bleak film if cut down. The main thing I was left feeling as I exited the IMAX though, was that I had actually seen this story before. Nearly ten years ago.

The Imitation Game is a film from 2014 starring Benedict Cumberbatch about the ‘Father of Modern Computing’, Alan Turing. It is a film about a troubled and arrogant genius who is recruited into the war effort to develop a piece of technology that could end the war early and save lives. Along the way he alienates people, is pilloried and forgotten by the military and the film is formed around the framing device of an interrogation/interview that questions his character. Sound familiar? It is not a very complex or nuanced comparison but they are fundamentally the same story but with one major difference. One of these men created a piece of technology that has improved and even saved lives, that almost our entire civilisation is built around, while the other created a piece of technology that murdered…