Oscar buzz endorses Hawking or Turing for best film of 2014

The Oscar buzz has been sounding off for several weeks now, filled with rumours and speculations. A lot of new films have been mentioned, but the top two contenders for best film of 2014 are all about the intense trials, tribulations and triumphs of genius.

Cited everywhere from Variety and Time magazines to New York Times, the two which have only come out in the last few weeks are The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game.

One is about the disabled genius Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne) whose physical capacities dissipate right before our eyes in the film. The other is about the quirky mathematician Alan Turing played by the equally brilliant actor Benedict Cumberbatch who‘s best known for playing another quirky genius, Sherlock Holmes in the popular BBC-TV series Sherlock.

If I were a judge, or even a gambling gal, my money would be on The Imitation Game hands down.

The final verdict by the Film Academy members will undoubtedly be a close call since both films are beautifully made: The casting is incredible fine, the settings are historically accurate, the cinematography is first class and the scripts are beautifully written, filled with intelligent dialogue and emotional depth.

What’s more, both films are based on true stories and real life characters, although there has been some criticism of The Imitation Game in that it is said to embellish Alan Turing’s life story. I personally don’t have a problem with that since I love historical fiction and the film is not meant to be a documentary.

Triumph

What it is meant to do is clarify the fact that Turing and his top-secret British code-breaking team played a profoundly important role in winning World War Two because they succeeded in breaking the Nazi’s impossibly encrypted code which Hitler used to send out war commands that consistently caught the Allies unawares.

Without Turing’s code-breaking machine, there was little doubt the Nazis would have won the war and taken over Europe and most likely the rest of the world.

But why I would run with Turing’s over Hawking’s stories is not simply that one film would seem to tell the tale of one man’s descent into total physical incapacity, apart from his brain power which remained intact to this day.

Meanwhile, the other film is about another man’s construction of a machine (said to be the basis of our contemporary computers) that managed to solve one of the most complex mathematical mysteries of the 20th century.

But neither film can be judged so simplistically as to suggest one is a downer (Hawking’s), the other (Turing’s) an ‘upper’. Their life stories are far too complex and emotionally compelling for such an easy interpretation.

In fact, both films are ultimately about the triumph of the human spirit over extreme--even life-threatening adversity, be it physical, technological or militaristic.

Both tales might be described as miraculous since neither man would have achieved all that he did without exercising his inspired genius. Yet neither one could have succeeded by themselves.

Hawking would never have survived if the woman (Felicity Jones) he met just before his neurological disease set in hadn’t stuck with him through thick and thin.

Her self-sacrificing for him was admirable although her loyalty finally wore thin for various reasons. Turing also needed a top-tier team of mathematicians to work with, although the code-breaking ‘Turing machine’ was clearly his invention.

Outstanding

So what is it about The Imitation Game that makes me feel it will win Best Film of 2014 when the awards are finally divvied out in Hollywood in the next few months?

First and foremost, I’ll confess that I love the casting, especially of Benedict Cumberbatch as the intensely brilliant but socially-awkward Turing and Keira Knightly as a beautiful and brilliant math wizard who was the only woman on the Turing team.
Charles Dance (White Mischief), Mark Strong and others gave equally awesome performances. The pivotal role that the Turing Machine would play in seriously winning the war was compelling as well.

Hawking’s story was more personal and theoretical, more abstract and less attractive physically. So while his relationship with his wife, children and colleagues in the Academy was inspiring, the issues of time, collapsing black holes and esoteric mathematical equations won’t be as intriguing to a wide population as the issue of winning the war, especially when the enemy is Adolph Hitler.

I might be wrong especially as there are so many outstanding films that have recently come out, like Wild, Birdman, Boyhood and Selma, based on another pivotal moment in 20th century history.

So we’ll simply have to wait and see, but as the BAFTA awards come up in February, we will get an early indication then as to who might win in March.

Stay tuned!