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.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO PRONOUNCE ‘FKA TWIGS’?

DID YOU SEE MORE MOVIES THAN FRIENDS OVER 

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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