The victory of The Imitation Game at the Toronto film festival, from which I’ve just returned, seals the deal for the biopic of Alan Turing to dominate the Oscars, just as previous winners 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire have in years gone by. The Brits are coming! Again! So why my sinking heart? Partly it’s because – unlike 12 Years a Slave – The Imitation Game simply isn’t very stirring. It’s neither turkey nor lion, a solid three-star job. Benedict Cumberbatch is as clever as ever; Keira Knightley is cute as the brainbox to whom Turing is briefly engaged. It pushes buttons with routine ease, decodes a complex bit of cryptography into something even the groggiest of us could follow. It does nothing to rock the boat, nothing you wouldn’t predict. In fact, it’s a film that must manufacture tension from foregone conclusions. Will Turing’s Enigma-busting machine work? It might. Will we win the war? It’s possible.
Where this gets sticky is when it comes to the fate of Turing himself, who was gay when it was still illegal and convicted for gross indecency, opted for chemical castration rather than imprisonment, and died a year later, probably by his own hand, while suffering this indignity. Did you know that already? I’d figured most people would, or at least know the gist. And yet protest they did about reviewers like me spoiling the surprise. The Imitation Game marks the return of spoiler-gate, that endless argy-bargy between critics and readers about how much information is too much.
My other problem with The Imitation Game is that it tries to have its gay martyr cake and eat it. We never see Turing romantically or sexually involved with a man. A chaste note to a schoolboy crush is as steamy as it gets. And yet it does make cinematic capital from the prejudice that led to its hero’s dreadful fate. The end credits hammer home, alongside Turing’s achievements, his terrible persecution, finishing with the balm of the royal pardon granted him by the Queen two years ago. Somehow this serves to add insult to injury. Not just because – as Peter Tatchell wrote – there is no pardon for the not-so-famous thousands of men in the same boat. But because it presents the pardon as the closing chapter in the story of a man whose sexuality cost him his life, yet about which the film is as squeamish as Mrs Grundy.
Living it up
Toronto is one of the most expensive cities in the world – especially if you want to eat or drink anything. A recent comparison found an average basket of groceries cost 40% more there than in Berlin. Yet despite the high-rolling prices, the salaries insulated from the crash, life there is no picnic. The Guardian team covering the festival stayed in an Airbnb flat a tram-ride out of town. The rooms were like cells, the tiny balcony (traffic noise amplified, 14 floors up) so bleak your thoughts naturally turned to leaping. Titch that I am, even I could touch the ceiling. Yet this was a luxury condo, in a block full of young urban professionals. One thing Canada has is space. So why is it so keen to build up, not out?
Mango diplomacy
Back in London, I’m lucky enough to live in an area where it’s possible to buy – cheaply, at 3am – a sheep’s head, a bottle of brandy in the shape of an AK-47, and 28 different types of olive. But one item has been scant on Green Lanes this summer: Chaunsa mangoes from Pakistan, known by many as “party mangoes” on account of their colourful packaging and amazing flavour (think papaya, honey and heaven). I’d assumed their absence this year was because of a fruit-fly infestation that hit early shipments. But it transpires that many cases have been given by Pakistan’s prime minister to his Indian counterpart to try to kickstart stalled peace talks. Of course, one’s first wish is that such mango diplomacy does the trick. But if not, is it too much to hope that they re-enter circulation soon?
