Title: The Imitation Game
Director: Morten Tyldum
Cinematography and Acting: 5/5
Content: 4/5
Overall: 9/10
It feels like I haven't seen a movie in ages and it's been good to return to movies with a film this amazing.
Alan Turing has always fascinated me and I suppose the fact that I'm an engineer has made me identify with this movie a bit more. However, regardless of my personal interest in the history of technology, I feel like this is one of the best films I have seen.
The story is set out beautifully with flashbacks inserted into the timeline. This helps the audience really understand the loneliness and emotional distance Turing must have felt. Woven into Turing's emotional story however, is his passion to solve a puzzle. His talent and passion for this is so great that he has helped shape history. Unfortunately, a lot more people know of Taylor Swift than him. You might believe this is purely down to the usual disinterest people have when it comes to science. That may play a part of course but a far more tragic factor is also involved. He was treated disgustingly (not that many years ago) for being homosexual. Hence, this film also serves as a reminder of the tragedies in our history.
Benedict Cumberbatch's acting is incredible. He plays the role of the ostracised genius to perfection. It's probably an incredibly difficult job to portray a socially awkward person's emotional history but Cumberbatch has done it faultlessly.
Before I had seen the film, my only worry concerning the cast was Keira Knightley. I have never been the biggest fan of her acting and I was worried that her overly dramatic style could have harmed the film's overall success. I still wouldn't say she was incredible but she was significantly better than I expected and compared to Cumberbatch's shining performance, she managed to hold her own.
All in all, this was probably one of the best films of 2014 and the only reason it doesn't get a 10 is because I am incredibly reluctant to declare anything to be perfect.
*The product artwork I use within this review is taken from Wikipedia in order to identify the subject of the review. It is low enough in resolution such that it couldn't be used as counterfeit or pirated material.
*"The Imitation Game poster" by Source. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Imitation_Game_poster.jpg#mediaviewer/File:The_Imitation_Game_poster.jpg
Title: 40 Rules of Love
Author: Elif Safak
Language: 3/5
Content: 4/5
Overall: 7/10
This book is a story of parallels. Two parallel stories set centuries and worlds apart, to be exact. However, the stories and the people taking part in them have more in common that you'd think.
The Forty Rules of Love is, as you might imagine, a story about love in all it's forms. It includes friendship, romantic love and divine love and makes the reader question whether there is actually much of a difference between what we distinguish as different types of love.
On one hand, there is the story of Rumi and his love Shams Tabrizi and on the other hand is Ella, a typical American middle-class housewife. The novel switches between the two timelines allowing the reader to almost flow through the timeline in parallel universes. I personally believe it's a very successful way of setting out the book.
It definitely serves as a good introduction to Sufism and hopefully will cause people to read Rumi's poems. Sufism is incredibly interesting not only from a philosophical standpoint but also from the angle of religious interpretation and a book this popular is a non-negligible tool in raising awareness.
Other than that, I actually found some aspects of the novel childish, cliche even. Especially towards the end I felt like Safak got carried away with trying to form parallels and took the easy way out. She might have meant it to serve as yet another example of one of the Forty Rules: 'While the parts change, the whole remains the same. For every thief who departs this world, a new one is born. And every decent person who passes away is replaced by a new one. In this way not only does nothing remain the same but also nothing every really changes.' If so, not only is this an 'outer reading' of the rule, it is also a misrepresentation of the Sufi belief.
On a brighter note, I thought the language was flowing and devoid of forced sentences. It wasn't anything to write home about but it wasn't bad either.
There are however, also sophisticated pleasant details in the book such as every chapter starting with the letter B as it is in the Mathnawi.
All in all, I believe it was an enjoyable book to read which gave a reader-friendly introduction to a very important poet and his beliefs. At this point, I should say that I put off reading this book for years because I was hesitant about Elif Safak as a writer. I had read 'The Bastard of Istanbul' which I had loved but thought she wrote books on topics she knew would be popular. I also happened to read this book at a time in my life where I made a couple of major decisions. I am not sure if that also affected by views but I can easily say I very much enjoyed the book and am looking forward to reading a few of Safak's other books (starting with re-reading The Bastard of Istanbul)
