Arts
8A — Wednesday, January 7, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
Sid the Sloth? Really?!
‘Imitation Game’
takes few chances
Historical
drama sidesteps
controversial themes
By ZAK WITUS
Daily Arts Writer
Richard Lewis, my “Introduc-
tion to Cognitive Science” profes-
sor, might blush
when he reads
the
follow-
ing
anecdote.
In lecture last
semester, while
introducing our
class to Alan
Turing, whom
many
praise
as the founder
of
computer
science
and
computational
theory, Rick suddenly stopped his
perpetual pacing and his voice
dropped out. All of us in the lec-
ture hall stopped scribbling and
typing and raised our heads. Rick’s
eyes welled up with tears. “See,
Alan Turing was gay,” he said.
Now, you might be thinking: “that
Richard Lewis is a terrible, preju-
diced, homophobic bastard!” but
Rick wasn’t crying because Tur-
ing was gay. Rick got all weepy
because even after Turing’s scien-
tific breakthroughs, which we still
talk about today (e.g., my philoso-
phy professor this semester (Win-
ter 2015) just assigned our class
Turing’s 1950 paper, “Computing
Machinery and Intelligence” for
Thursday), and even after helping
break the Nazi encryption code —
the infamous “Enigma Machine”
— the British government arrest-
ed, tried and convicted Turing
of “indecency,” or, simply being
gay. Rick explained that the Brit-
ish court offered Turing a choice:
chemical castration or two years
in prison. Turing chose the for-
mer, and then, after one year of
hormone therapy, he committed
suicide.
“The Imitation Game” tells the
same story but with the grand
gesticulation
and
technicolor
pathos of a film with the name of
another man on its mind: Oscar.
As they sometimes say about good
film actors, “The Imitation Game”
hit every mark. The filmmakers
did what they thought would win
the affection of the Academy: they
had the actors spiel pseudo-wis-
dom that viewers could recite on
their drive home from the theater;
they told a story using the two
big Oscar buzzwords (gay and
war); and they told a story that’s
exoterically enjoyable but makes
you feel smart and sophisticated.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad
film, because it’s not. By dress-
ing itself up in the generic Oscar
garments, “The Imitation Game”
ends up looking pretty good. But
by imitating greatness instead of
creating it itself, the film is just
mediocre — which people often
think means “bad,” but actually
just means “medium.”
Though Turing was, as they say
in the film, a “poofter,” the film’s
depiction of Turing is not homo-
sexual enough. The film appro-
priately doesn’t depict Turing’s
gayness with as much flamboy-
ant fabulousness as, say, “Paris is
Burning.” On the other hand, the
film shows almost none of Tur-
ing’s gay behavior. The emphatic
absence of romance between
Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch,
“Star Trek Into Darkness”) and
Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley,
“Pirates of the Caribbean”) makes
sense in this film, especially
because Hollywood audiences
would typically expect a hot, sexy
romance
between
Knightley’s
and Cumberbatch’s characters.
But it’s worth pausing over the
fact that though this violation of
our expectation serves the gay
theme on the surface we still get
to gawk and drool over the heart-
wrenchingly gorgeous Knightley.
IEssentially, the film (again) is too
hetero, and Clarke/Knightley’s
sexiness, instead of just echo-
ing down the empty corridors of
Turing’s homosexual desire, also
resonates with the heterosexual
male audience’s libidinous (ahem)
“tuning fork.”
Despite being frequently mis-
taken for Sid the Sloth from the
“Ice Age” saga, Cumberbatch
has the perfect face for this
character and he manipulates
it
masterfully.
Cumberbatch
adopts a refined countenance
that conveys the depth of Tur-
ing’s intelligence even when he
isn’t speaking. He’s had plenty
of practice making the smart-
guy face on his television show
“Sherlock.”
Throughout
the
film, his face often evokes that
peculiar feeling you sometimes
experience when conversing
with an exceptionally intelli-
gent individual — which, now
that I think of it, is just the feel-
ing of someone actually listen-
ing to you. As in real life, we
respond to Turing’s (i.e., Cum-
berbatch’s) careful listening by
listening more carefully our-
selves. Turing’s attentive gaze
and bright eyes make us realize
that we’re dealing with a formi-
dable intelligence, but, before
Turing verbally responds to
who or what he’s attending to,
we don’t know what that intel-
ligence is currently calculating
or computing, so we lean in fur-
ther. Cumberbatch completes
his construction of the (ahem)
“enigma” that is Alan Turing by
adding in nervous twitches and
stuttering, thus transforming
what might otherwise be, and
often still is, an arrogant and
narcissistic English professor
into an endearingly awkward
but exceptionally brilliant war
hero.
As previously mentioned, the
film riffs on two of modern Holly-
wood’s most popular themes: gay
identity and war. But we have to
ask: What image of war does this
film project? What message about
war does it try to convey? Just as
the film avoids direct contact with
Turing’s gayness, it also avoids
direct contact with war. Just as
we see (virtually) no gay romance
or sexuality, we also see no bloodi-
ness, brutality or violence. (The
most physically violent image is
a firm shoulder bump that sends
the feeble Turing to the floor.) The
absence of physical violence serves
the film’s subject matter: The film
has no superfluous pretenses about
the kind of war film it’s trying to
be. It’s the kind of war film where
the most violent image (physical,
psychological or otherwise) is the
unplugging of the code-breaking
computer.
But it’s worth noting how
war is present in the movie as it
is in the consciousness of most
Americans — a mere abstrac-
tion — and therefore it doesn’t
present us with any sights or
sounds that could potentially
challenge or offend our soci-
ety’s “civilized” (i.e., dull) sen-
sibilities. Even with Turing’s
gayness, which serves as a cor-
nerstone of this film, we don’t
see much of his suffering (e.g.,
his hormone therapy). In short,
“The Imitation Game” doesn’t
challenge its audience enough:
By avoiding the naked reality
of Turing’s gay identity as well
as World War II, the film avoids
too much of its potentially
very upsetting and hence very
controversial subject in favor
of appealing to a wider PG-13
audience.
Daily Book Review:
Endearing ‘Janice’
Refreshing cop
novel humanizes
the NYPD
By KATHLEEN DAVIS
Senior Arts Editor
In an intensely polarizing
year, it’s hard to find a subject
more relevant than attitudes
towards police. Between the
shootings of Michael Brown
and Tamir Rice (among others)
and protests for “Black Lives
Matter” as well as pro-police
“Blue Lives Matter,” it seems as
though everyone has an opinion
regarding the role of cops in the
United States. Whether your
recent thoughts toward the boys
in blue have been critical or
defending, it’s important to step
back and realize one universal
truth: when it comes down to
it, policemen are just everyday
people. There are going to be
good ones and there are going
to be bad ones, and sometimes
it takes one appropriately timed
book to bring this to light.
“Uncle Janice,” the sopho-
more novel by Matt Burgess
(“Dogfight, a Love Story”), is
a refreshing cop novel featur-
ing an unlikely yet necessary
hero: Janice Itwaru, a mixed
race, take-no-shit young police-
woman from Queens. It’s Jan-
ice’s attitude toward her career
choice, motivated substantially
by both the need to support her
dementia-stricken mother and
her childhood love of superhe-
roes, that allows the reader to
step back from recent good cop
versus bad cop dialogues and
view the profession from a sub-
jective point of view.
Janice’s role in the NYPD is
that of an “uncle,” an undercover
cop who tries to buy drugs off the
street so her backups can arrest
the dealer for possession charges.
It’s a dangerous job, and Janice is
quite literally dying to become a
detective, a job that requires a cer-
tain amount of “buys” off dealers
before she can be promoted. Jan-
ice wants to be a detective more
than anything, and “Uncle Janice”
follows the titular character as she
pushes through adversity from her
co-workers to make her last buys.
This is all while navigating dan-
gerous drug slingers, her personal
life and her deteriorating sanity.
Burgess’s portrayal of work-
ing class New York City pro-
vides a view unseen in popular
works like “Sex and the City” or
“The Wolf of Wall Street.” This
city is a community of working-
class people trying to get by,
and sometimes that means tak-
ing on a dangerous career that
requires no college education,
like a cop or drug dealer.
The witty internal mono-
logue Burgess gives to Janice
allows the reader to melt into
her world, as one could be lis-
tening to a friend as she trashes
her colleagues after a long day
of work or explains how her lack
of a boyfriend is due to the time
commitment her job requires.
Janice Itwaru isn’t a typical
narrator, but that’s what makes
her character so believable and
endearing — even when her
decision-making skills lead her
into cringe-worthy situations.
Like a real person, Janice has
good qualities and bad ones,
and she makes both good and
bad decisions. The reader fol-
lows her through the realiza-
tion that she may or may not be
an alcoholic like her father and
that she may be falling prey to
the same early onset dementia
as her mother. “Uncle Janice”
may be primarily a cop novel,
but its strength lies in the fact
that this is a novel about people,
and realistic ones at that.
ANNAPURNA PICTURES
Do you know how hard it is to act with all this makeup on?
Dark ‘Foxcatcher’ a
Freudian nightmare
Strong performances
fill character-
driven drama
By CATHERINE SULPIZIO
Senior Arts Editor
Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher”
derives little of its suspense from
the climactic spoiler the entire audi-
ence knows is coming. As it should
— the 1996 trial
of
paranoid-
schizophrenic
John du Pont
held
national
interest because
of its titillating
combination
of
American
aristocracy and
Olympic lore. On
the
cinematic
stage, it plays out a more psycholog-
ical brand of strife: brother against
brother, father figure against father
figure.
The brothers of “Foxcatcher”
are Mark and Dave Schulz, two
Olympic
gold-medalist
wres-
tlers. Post-victory, Mark (Chan-
ning Tatum, “Magic Mike”) lives
in moderate poverty, training all
day before returning to his dim
apartment to eat Ramen and play
Nintendo in solitude. In contrast,
older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo,
“The Avengers”) has a successful
coaching career and a loud, happy
family no doubt aided by his easy
charisma, which Mark holds in
taciturn resentment. So when, out
of the blue, billionaire John du Pont
(Steve Carell, “The Office”) of the
eponymous pharmaceutical com-
pany (and fortune) offers to sponsor
Mark’s training at his Foxcatcher
training center, he takes it up with-
out any hesitation. Mark, with his
clumsy muteness, isn’t a personable
character, but his immediate and
childlike trust pangs the audience’s
heart.
Du Pont is the dwindling end of
the du Pont family line: with no role
in the company and an endless sup-
ply of money, he lives in the sprawl-
ing estate with his domineering
WASP mother, who together, live
out — surprise! — a veritable knot of
Freudian neuroses. Du Pont isn’t a
good coach or wrestler; he has more
money than sense, along with a
bevy of substance problems. How-
ever, he longs to exert a paternal
influence over the fatherless Mark.
Du Pont eventually lures Dave to
coach the Olympic-hopeful Fox-
catcher team. From here, the duel-
ing personalities drive the second
half’s tension, as Mark struggles
to emerge from his brother’s influ-
ence, and John sucks Dave into a
petty, unrequited rivalry.
In “Foxcatcher,” the sport of
wrestling is stripped from its patri-
otic residue. Sure, Mark and du
Pont laud it as the embodiment of
America’s noble, patriarchal values,
but their wistful reminiscences feel
as outmoded as the du Pont family.
This isn’t “Rocky,” where boxing’s
potent masculinity is the saving
grace for an outsider. Here, wres-
tling chisels away at all respites to
the outside world, until its protago-
nists teeter on an unsustainable
sliver.
It’s the exquisitely directed
scenes that illustrate just what an
animalistic and low (as du Pont’s
mother puts it) sport it is. In one
scene, Mark pins down his oppo-
nent, whose legs release spastic
tremors like an agitated animal in
its death throes.
This is in contrast to the train-
ing scenes, which feel balletic
in their choreography. They’re
important because they work out
Mark’s intensely physical char-
acter, the type of man who feels
through doing. In an early scene
with Dave, their well-practiced
movements glide from broth-
erly intimacy into tempestuous
spates of simmering resentment.
Needless to say, Tatum’s atten-
tion to detail is remarkable in his
performances — Mark is mental-
ly slow and quiet, but never flat.
Ruffalo brands Dave with his
signature sincerity, saturating
him with all the natural charm
and likeability that overshadows
his younger brother.
Perhaps it’s because du Pont
receives little respective charac-
terization that his role is stagnant.
While prosthetics and makeup
transform Carell’s personable face
into a creepy mask, his performance
is Michael Scott on ego-maniacal
overdrive. In real life, paranoia and
schizophrenia probably drove du
Pont to murder Dave, but in “Fox-
catcher,”
deep-seated
mommy
issues and jealousy are positioned
as the unsatisfying motives.
As it stands, a quieter ending
would have better fit “Foxcatch-
er” ’s modus operandi for the bulk
of the film: to telescope the imper-
ceptible, unstable and familial
politics of the trio. The film is
threaded with Miller’s skillfully
composed glimpses, which illus-
trate du Pont’s power maneuvers.
In one scene, du Pont’s lawyer
prods Mark with a series of ques-
tions, like whether he owns prop-
erty, when his parents divorced
and who raised him, that method-
ically reveal Mark’s isolation. But
for this nuanced and un-theatri-
cal atmosphere Miller superbly
crafts, that final gunshot is too
loud, too disruptive.
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‘The Imitation
Game’ doesn’t
challenge its
audience enough
B
The
Imitation
Game
The Michigan
Theater
The Weinstein
Company
B+
Foxcatcher
The Michigan
Theater
Annapurna
Pictures
FILM REVIEW
FILM REVIEW