Reel Pieces: The Imitation Game's Benedict Cumberbatch with Annette Insdorf

uh this was the reward that this man who like I said before saved the very democracy in government that then turned and punished him that was that was what he got that was the hand he was dealt and I was so so angry so upset and that grief was compounded with the realization that why in Earth doesn't everybody know this story why don't people know about this man why is he not on the front cover of textbooks not just science books but history books [Applause] w wow that was weird we're having a normal conversation by the curtain then suddenly 900 people thank you very thank you very much well thank you we are so grateful that you have made time in a very busy schedule to be with this group that clearly has for you what I can only only call profound admiration um so thank you thank you thank you thank you a couple of questions obviously about the imitation game and your remarkable incarnation of Alan churing and maybe a few other questions about your career before we take a few from this audience um I'm sure you've been asked this before but if you could tell us a little about what were the most challenging aspects of your preparation to play this man and given that there was so much secrecy about Alan cheering during and after World War II were there any filmed records of him was there anything that you could study that gave you a sense of his body his mannerisms uh no nothing nothing there's there's no filmed footage of him there's no audio recording of him but there is extensive anecdotal evidence of of what he was like how he moved how he composed himself how he changed around certain circles of people what uh moved him what what he abhor how he would uh hold himself his appearance in his clothes it's but it's all anecdotal so a lot of reading and um you know I'm I was really fortunate to meet some of his uh surviving family who knew him during their lifetime but the oldest member of that um group was was 16 um uh with her last memory and but even that was very Illuminating they talked about a man who was incredibly respectful of them as as human beings who would treat them as adults who didn't treat them as uh children who treated them as equals but they remembered being amused by him feeling confident and happy when he was around them and uh being amused by him like I said you know he he do extraordinary uh tricks of of Brilliance like playing chess with his back to the board um and and you know he tell them funny stories and you know he he he is funny in himself sometimes as you've seen in the film accidentally but also he also has a sense of humor he can Implement humor rather than be the subject of it and that was a great hook into humanizing somebody who on the page has abilities and a sort of mental uh faculty which is so beyond you know even the most profoundly intelligent of of of my breed as in an actor you know I it just it's a very daunting thing when you look at what his mind gave the world he was the father father of the modern Computing age he was a man who with algorithms helped to crack the German Enigma code he was a brilliant realizer of his theories with a team of mechanics and engineers and a team I I hastened to add someone who didn't work in isolation someone who could work with groups of people who understood people um but somebody who realized his ideas in a physical form and so you know that to me meant that he was somebody who um I mean you know his ability to do all of these things these algorithms I was talking about are still the same algorithms that are used in Google search engines which is a weird Loop of some kind of circular logic because you put in his name now and it links me with him which is going back to talking about the family very embarrassing actually apologized to them at the beginning of the London premere because uh it's it's a it's a profoundly banal banal link to have um but as as I always say um when I get the opportunity to speak to people who seen this film I'm I'm only Too Proud to talk about him and it and be a spokesperson for somebody who would have abored being a spokesperson for himself and uh who tragically in his own life was uh abused by um a government and a uh um a democracy that he'd helped save from Fascism and nationalism by being treated in the most terrifying fear formed manifestations of that that form um you know Prejudice and and fear of the other and that scapegoating continues but I'm I'm I'm going well off the topic of your answer but you know the point is that this this extraordinary being was was was very unattainable when you look at the pure math the the incredible Brilliance of his mind so anecdotal evidence from from them was was really important um to be able to try and clue into my major hook for him which was that he felt everything so Keen everything that he brought to us in his work and His science and his achievements as as a man on this Earth was um utterly utterly linked to something that all of us have it was it was about his environment it was about language it was about the people that he met everything that he experienced influenced his mind um which again sort of amplifies the volume of the tragedy of of his death because this world that he was born into this incredibly fragile and sensitive child first of all as um someone who was born into an era between uh well just at the end or the middle of during the second world first world war but not affected by that but his parents and the whole attitude of that time was still very Victorian his parents were away in the Diplomatic part of the Diplomatic rather in India and his mother was shocked to discover after a very long time away from him when he was in foster care with this retired army couple that she came back and his his stammer had developed he had a stammer this child had a stammer so even at that very early point he obviously needed paternal love and craved a deeper care than he got and that was very much a product of his time not not to denigrate the parents that looked after him or his own parents for what they were doing for their Duty for what they felt was right for their lives but it it really affected him and to have a stammer now let alone in that era must have been ex an extraordinary handicap to not be able to make social bonds to not be able to make easy relationships through language and understanding and being treated immediately as different by your contempories by other children and that just continued into his adolescence when he discovered he was a homosexual man um and had feelings for men rather than women and the tragedy um so beautifully portrayed um by the two boys in the film by Alex Crowther who's for me the real discovery of the film um incredible performance that that that's where you see him shift into the man that you meet in my incarnation of him at the first moment the film someone who closed himself off to the feelings of the world of the influence of the world because they were so damaging to him but also um spurred him as the incredible um incredible uh uh correspondence between him and and Christopher Mam's mom testifies spurred him to become the the student the in incredibly hardworking mind and applied mind that he became he realized that God or the idea of Soul was beyond his um belief um he felt at the beginning that he wanted to believe that because Christopher was such a real presence anyone who's ever experienced the grief of losing somebody who's incredibly dear to you it's like a limb you cannot believe it's not there when it first disappears and he wanted to believe that there was a soul some kind of afterlife or you know way of believing that he was still present and came to the conclusion slowly as that grief cooled a little that it wasn't but he would keep it present by giving life to the legacy of this inspiring man this ins inspiring love of his life really um by working to be as good as Christopher was he was a better student than him he was more capable a little older as well um and that that tragedy gave us the incredible work ethic of of the man so all of these things that influenced um him um you know they they were they were things that that a humble actor can can relate to that we can all relate to as as receivers of stories as well as being storytellers so that was very very important um and I think you know beyond that yes like I was saying a lot of anecdotal evidence about his stammer and the way he would come to a word and it it wasn't plosives that he would stammer on it wasn't hard consonant it was it could be anything and it was it was a weight it was a really it was a difficult moment it was a hard hard thing to have a conversation with them but everyone not just tolerated it but completely accepted it it wasn't something that became a hindrance to people's enjoyment of him fascination with him um and uh and love of him um and that that that that speaks for the for the brilliant people and the adoring people that he had around him and how special they were as well um but no it was you know I was watching a little bit backstage because I I I got here early and um you know I just noticed things that you know the hand in the pocket the sort of a scans the head at the side um his teeth which were a fake set of teeth that I had in the sort of outward inward things that were very helpful in in in uh the research I did to try and kind of inhabit him were were were although there wasn't something to literally impersonate or interpret through uh an embodiment through you know film or or or audio recording I I had a fair idea from people's accounts of him of what I was aiming towards and like I said the the deeper discuss Discovery was what really motivated him what this this sensitive child was and and how the world around him affected him and that that's the thing that grew the inner life my understanding of of what was going on inside the man um yeah that was a long I I warn I I saw this huge sheet of questions backstage I was like just ask me one it's it's late I'm emotional uh I'll I'll yeah they're not all questions no but but I think what is remarkable that people in this audience and when I saw it at the torite film festival respond to it's not just that you create a portrait of a genius and someone whose Legacy is actually part of our daily lives even if we didn't know his name I mean we call them computers now as the end credits say but you add to that the complexity of someone who as Kieran nly's character puts it is a fragile narcissist and who is arrogant and who you know is off-putting at the same time that he learns to become a team worker and I would imagine that during the course of the film you and the director must have worked out you know in which scenes to sort of push that social awkwardness or arrogance and in which scenes to highlight more of the the hero in him yes very much so but I think a lot of the heavy lifting was done by graem Moore's um first time feature script I mean it's quite an achievement um and um and he's 12 years old uh he really he looks 12 I mean it's it's unbelievable how sort of uh puppy as she looks uh he amazing amazing and and the the real what the first lure when I heard about this script I was playing KH and uh in a very different head space uh and this sort of you know uh what could have been a sort of English scented Rose Garden of a script kind of landed with with huge kind of heat on it because it was top of the Black List and um I I was intrigued by people of taste who said you've got to read well including everyone who votes on the back The Blacklist that's that's in case you don't know the Blacklist is published every year the best unmade screenplays in other words what people have a lot of uh interest in because no one actually owns the thing yet and it's a lot of work and a lot of reading that goes into it it's an amalgamation of an incredibly large volume of people who are in the industry or somehow affiliated with that world and and have read scripts and vote for them so it's a huge pool of reading resource so it's it's quite it's a very thorough examination of material but um it was very exciting to read for that Reas reason alone but the minute I engaged with it and and studied that first scene it was what I loved about it was how uncompromising it was there was no vanity about the character gr wasn't trying to make you like him and he was introducing this extraordinary difficult diffident um and different man with great humor as well and that was a real relief because the minute you're just playing clever for the sake of playing clever or just demonstrating intelligence it's very dead as drama or as anything that can engage you in to a further investigation or interest I I personally feel um and and he really avoided that from from the from the GetGo for me as a reader and then you're drawn into this sort of extraordinary Thriller of how this man and this odd fitting man with this equally odd group in this incredibly pressurized time where England is at Siege and the war is really tipping in favor of of Third Reich how on Earth is he going to play a part in this when he can't manage being with a group of people so the two things kind of collide and you learn how and what he is and why he is at the same time was learning and getting to that eure where they break the code so it was a beautiful allision of those two things and then just being socker punched uh I mean really profoundly by by the ending and just as I said you know not not only is this a man who was punished for for being true to what he was as a homosexual man in the 50s admitting the police interview after his house was burgled by rent boy and he confessed to his homosexuality not only that igny being faced with trial a trial um a very public trial because he was a a public figure as as a math professor professor at Manchester not not then having disclosed obviously what his role was in the war because it was still within the the confines of the official Secrets act the 35 year V of um silence that people took to um honor their country the work that they did for their country during the war in secret and uh not just that but then to be faced with the choice of two years imprisonment or two years State sanctioned chemical castration through weekly estrogen injections um just Beggars belief and it was less than 100 years ago and uh this was the reward that this man who like I said before saved the very democra government that then turned and punished him that was that was what he got that was the hand he was dealt and I was so so angry so upset and that grief was compounded with the realization that why in Earth doesn't everybody know this story why don't people know about this man why is he not on the front cover of textbooks not just science books but history books and why with Darwin and Newton is he not a figurehead iconically on on one of our you know our currency notes one of our bank notes you know he has that level of standing in the scientific Community let alone as a an extraordinary human being and a war hero and and an unwilling or un and what am I trying to say not unwilling but um he didn't make himself out to be a master by being true to who he was but he has become a gay icon because he was true to his identity but a quiet hero in that sense as well and I thought I have to be a part of this I really want to tell this story I I had an aching need to try and at least serve his legacy to to a to a broader audience um and so yeah I I I I pursued it a little bit I tracked it as that ugly kind of phrase that that phrase is means that um yeah I just followed the script it was with a studio it was with another actor and I I just doggedly didn't let go of it I met with Ido and Norah before even Teddy schwarzman was on board before Morton till any other director had been talked about you were on board before I wasn't on board but I was on board the idea of being on board um uh yeah I was in my head I was already on board no but I I I just thought I I I want to try and be a part of this I really do so without being sort of stalkerish or weird I I kind of did stalk and be weird um no I didn't I didn't I didn't I didn't I but I met with them and I talked to them about my understanding of the subjects and and and the period and Anan and and what I felt about the story and and how important it was for for me and the world to know it on a larger scale and then uh yeah it got moved around a bit and uh became available again and um and then the rest sort of unfolded um Morton was Keen to talk to me and we got on very well on a Skype chat and then really well in person and I realized very quickly Not only was he a really interesting antidote to mix into the equation of making what is ostensibly a period drama B epic um with the Thriller and the love story but also you know the great complexity like I was saying of Graham script but he I thought wow you going to bring a Norwegian uh director who's produced this fantastic work of dark comedic thrill in the shape of Head Hunters a fantastic film of last year and into the mix I thought wonderful wonderful that's a really skewed um atypical asymmetrical kind of approach and and sure enough not only not only did he did he say save it from from the potential cliches in my mind and and let me breathe and move in the character in the way uh that that hopefully would steer into complexity rather than cookie color cookie cusser obviousness um he also had a profound love of the subject and wealth of knowledge had really done his homework and I felt in safe hands both as an actor asking the sort of page one questions of who what why how when and also the other stuff of um yeah let's go into the social history the political history the the the where is the truth the anecdotal truth the historical truth where are we moving from that and and also just wonderful discussions of you know how we make this into a film and and what being a filmmaker is on both sides of the camera so it was a beautiful marriage really and you mentioned grahe Moore now he's also the bestselling author of a novel called the uh sherlockian which was published in 2010 and around the same time that you started playing Sherlock and you know I'm curious whether you were familiar with his novel at the time you read the script no wasn't okay I wasn't and I keep on it's a sort of stab of guilt every time someone mentions it because I still haven't read it oh dear um which is pretty awkward but but you know what you've been so busy doing other things that I think it's all right when you have off moment in the next two years or something and one of the things about this film that I found really well done is the concentric circles of narration because each time that we go back to 1951 to that police station we know more yeah so it's like very layered the story was the screenplay always like that in other words was there the voice over at the beginning saying are you listening you know are you paying attention you have no right to judge me until after it's over yes was that all there yes it was it was as far as I can remember it was pretty much all there um not much of the structure has changed um and I mean I I have a I have an aesthetic uh nervousness about voiceovers um I really do um you know I have my I have very strong feelings about it but I think it works um it at least is driven into the narrative you realize it's something that's extracted from a real moment rather than a device that just sort of floats on top of the film um although yeah I I I thought Morton a lot about how much I didn't want it to be a sort of uh a rich voice narration which you know times it has to be because you have to impart a lot of information over very um cinematic images of the broader context of the war the Machinery of War very importantly not not you know there there Morton talks about this a lot in Q&A and I must pick him up on it because I feel that there is a lot of human element in those snapshots you get of a wider context outside of those huts and the southeast of England with crossword enthusiasts cracking a code you know solving a puzzle the real players both at the front and in the blitz of London the people who are immediately affected by the outcome of that work I think a beautifully if lightly sketched you know the the people doing the crosswords in in the in the The Underground Station the tube station in um you know the friends having a cigarette not knowing about the imminent uboat strike and the torpedo that's about to destroy their Repose I mean I think it's it's it's very it's very it's very smart it's very beautifully done very deafly done um uh I can't remember where this question began sorry no quite whether voice over because as some of my colleagues and students in this audience know I have reticence about voiceover narration because sometimes less brilliant directors use it as a crutch where basically what should be presented through action and gesture Behavior you know be or silence um becomes explicated but here it's precisely because the voice right away brings in the you are you paying attention I suggested to the audience that it's addressed as much to us as it is to the policeman we have to pay attention because this is not a movie that sort of tells you hey Alan Turing was gay he had this double SE I mean basically we have to discover in the course of the film and frankly the detective is our surrogate you know we enter with him and at the end we cannot judge Alan Turing because we've learned how much good how Noble his life was and how ignoble his end was precisely and you know I wish I said that now I have to bring this up because 10 days ago or so we were here after watching The Theory of Everything with Eddie redm on the stage the fact of the matter is you played stepen Hawking it was your breakthrough role as far as I understand in the 2004 BBC film Hawking and I finally managed to see it it's very hard to see I had to join Amazon Prime to be able to finally look at it on a uh on a computer and um that's that's doing it on the BBC for you yeah right um not a long time ago no and and basically you know I I have profound admiration for what Eddie redm has done with the Theory of Everything But I confess that watching you play that part I realized my goodness you also so incredibly grasped it and my question and by the way it covers only two years in Hawkings life basically um the meeting with Jane and receiving the diagnosis um beginning to be afflicted by the motor neuron disease and discovering the the vocation with the thesis yeah I was curious whether playing Steven Hawking was some kind of preparation for playing Allen uring and I recognize how very different the characters are but the Brilliance the genius um if not it's okay no no that wasn't a s of Despair that was just me thinking um I uh I they're very very very different people um Stephen um is an extrovert is um incredibly um sly quick witted sparkly um gregarious you know he he was somebody whose uh initiation to University was hampered only by the fact that he was a little younger I mean one of the reasons he was not diagnosed until quite far into the first signs of the disease was because you know people just dismissed it as drinking he was keeping up with people who had returned from national service so he's surrounded by people older than him so there was a thing of trying to um be even more ulent than he actually was but he was he is and was incredibly colorful and um did you meet him before playing the part yes yes uh the night well yeah two nights before we started um filming I there was a he he he he felt that everything had been said about him uh and written about him that he wanted to discuss so um I as I'm sure Eddie Eddie told you and and and when I met him he still had movement left in his in his thumb so that was a cursor to move um on the the screen which had some um pre-prepared statements and platitudes some sort of fixed phrases as well I mean I studied it I was absolutely fascinated by and as well as literally picking out words alphabetically um but still it's a very particular Rhythm uh and you have to wait a long time to to have an answer so you know I I there was so many things I was like Eddie you know I was dying to ask him you know um uh just the thing of being young what what he remembered what music he first got into um what his favorite drink was whether there are any games around it how hard it was to be a Cox you know his first flation with girls um I just the stuff that men can talk about or that you know you can try to excavate with somebody who is real cognizant and and has a very rich memory of of his of his early life as Stephen does um and you you couldn't partly because it was also glorified script editing meeting so the first thing we got was a volley of I don't like those scenes where you holding your breath under the under the water and the bath that's that's not what happened you know so we were just sat there going oh crap uh and I didn't I just didn't speak I I really clammed up I was terrified um and I think like Eddie you know i' done a lot of research by that point not not um for as long as he he had to research but without comparing this is a weird conversation you know Eddie's a really good friend of mine and this is a part that you know he couldn't watch it because obviously he had to make his own stamp on it which I I actually can't wait to see I'm really excited about it he's he's a phenomenal actor and everything he touches is so profoundly investigated and realized and so so inhabited with you know touch paper sensitive soul and and delicacy you know it'll be a I know I'm going to love it he's a masterful actor um and uh at the same time you know we've been doing round tabls and things together and it's just really weird and he's talking about it and he just sort of goes did you you you must have had the same thing um uh did you did you better you know just like yeah no I did I did uh this is weird do we talk about this now this is awkward um but I you know it it was it was an amazing moment for me as an actor as as I as I know it has been for Eddie to both physically transform and connect with this incredible life story um emotionally as well as physically he he is and remains an an inspiration for for all of us and um as far as an influence on Alan well you know if you if you play someone like that that's going to influence your life he'll stop as far as direct comparisons um I do think they're quite slim on the ground um they're very different disciplines um you know Steph is a theorist and Allan was somebody whose theory was made real was made pragmatic he had a very lateral and specific way of looking at problems that um it often involved language literally language problems posed to him well the the big one where he wrote the uh the first paper on computable numbers that was basically blueprint for all modern Computing that that invented this idea of a universal machine called then by Newman the touring machine in honor of his work in that paper which we now know of as computers was basically grounded in a question that that talked about um a mechanical process and he took literally the words mechanical process how can a machine possibly perform mathematical equations and problems problem solving I should say not just equations but problem solving and he worked on stuff like all scientists great scientists do you know that borrow from what's come before there's a lineage and obviously you know U babage and and uh aah love lace uh were at the Forefront of that the idea of software in the form of something binary literally um you imagined I'm going to keep this brief and and TR and and simple because trust me I am quite simple so uh if you're thinking oh crap I the L um I I'll be quick um it it perforated pieces of paper holes and not holes marks and not marks a really simple thing of of something and nothing being the the the the the question going into this computer the computer being a mechanism that you can program to tackle the software coming into it which we now call software I mean it's extraordinary this simple Idea LED to what we now hold in our hands that sends us to the Moon that lands us asteroids on on on or satellites whatever that thing is on on a comet um that that that you know wakes us up in the morning that helps us navigate our R around traffic and communicate by wave that we're going the wrong way and we should take another route um you know it's it's it's profound what what what he what he came up with and and and that was through an immediate effect of language language literally spurred him at that moment even in the darkest moments near the end of his life um where he was suffering from the effects of the estrogen injections he he was studying morphogenesis which is the study of the mutation of cells um due to environmental stimuli and that that was happening in his body this amazing sexually active extraordinarily brilliant athlete I mean an Olympian level Mar marathon runner um was experiencing this ravaging effect of this drug and at the same time he was externalizing that into into our world as science and using it to the good do you think that if Alan churing had lived St does do that by the way sorry I just just no no cuz it's it's it's interesting um he he he does do that step uses his life and his work as well but what I'm trying to say is that Allan physically built what he theorized with a huge team as well but it was so his mind and his work is realized in a very different way I think from Stevens and as a human being tortured by a stammer um very internalized some times very aent at others you know the the gear changes and transitions I think in his character were a lot less smooth than they are with Steven um despite the huge handicapped that Stephen has of the delay in communication this man has revolutionized well created an entire genre of of uh literature in in Popular Science I mean that book that everyone has and tries to read or at least scans their eyes over the inkov you know he then he then kept working at those ideas in even more lay friendly versions and spawned an entire industry um and this is a man who takes a good half an hour to 20 minutes to form a sentence it's it's a miracle and it's it's one we all benefit from so um and also but as a master communicates it but Adam couldn't do that he couldn't do that um he never wrote the paper that would have put him in line for Nobel Prize and he could have done about algorithms algorithms that like I said you know crack the code and we still using search engines actually I'm going to share with you just my favorite thing in in Hawking you say this wonderful limmerick which because many of you were here for The Theory of Everything there was a young lady named brigh whose speed was faster than light she set out one day in a relative way and returned on the previous night it was a great moment in that film um what I was starting to ask you because as you're talking about Alan churing and his legacy I'm curious do you believe that had he lived beyond the 1950s that he would have become a kind of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs would he have spearheaded what we now know as the the Revolutionary aspect of computers in our daily lives I it's really hard to to to go into that world of conjecture um probably not because he was very focused on work that was by the end of his life he was really focused on artificial intelligence and work that was not invoke that wasn't a continuation of if if he'd written about the algorithms that he did in his in his the work on algorithms that he did in his early life and that he used used in the code breaking if he'd written expanded on um on computable numbers I think then he would have possibly won a Nobel Prize but even within his own Community he wasn't he was in a very small way but not in a sort of public way held as being um one of the titans of the digital age like the ones you mentioned like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates also he really did shy away from the Limelight he was he once said to his mother you know I wish I'd been born in a time where I I could have escaped to a medeval Monastery you know he he he wanted a cloistered life um he was he was sociable he was an active gay man and uh and and expanded his his life and experience of that even Beyond his his his prosecution and persecution into you know European sex clubs and and Danes in more tolerant societies but what I'm saying is principally fundamentally I don't think he was that kind of man that could have become a spokesperson or an icon on um it who knows who knows because also it's about projection it's about what the society or Community you come from elevates you too as well so it's possible um the most unlikely people end up on the stages talking about stuff and sometimes rather articulately um I know you were worried that I had too many questions but I'm going to hold off on a sec for a second because I know you have an extraordinary number of fans in this audience and I would not want them to feel that I monopolized everything and we have microphones because this is being live streamed so if somebody we have microphones in the audience okay I and I know a few of you need to leave to go right ahead but quickly and quietly there was um there was one here in the middle and also one on the left hand side so we'll start here pass the microphone along we'll do this for at least a few minutes because this poor gentleman has flown in red eye has to get up at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow tomorrow morning for interview so but we're going to move it along go right ahead hi I just wanted to say that um right here oh hi sorry um I find it amazing that you're able to just become the character for whatever whether it's Hawking Sherlock Alan Turing I mean it's incredible you really just you blend into the character so well and actually uh next summer I'm going over to see you in Hamlet so I'm looking forward to that oh thank you that so thank you and is there a question um okay I'll take that thank you well I say Hawking is available on YouTube as well Hawking is available on YouTube okay that maybe I hate admitting things like that publicly okay if we could get the microphone to that woman and also I had said there were there was one person or two people now on my left um if you all right let's go to the left one and then we'll send the microphone or you do have the microphone already okay go right ahead and then there are two hands there I can't even see but go ahead can I go okay hi go ahead I don't how to hold this you're doing fine okay it seemed to me that you were conflicted about the pardon the pardon that Alan touring was given on the one hand and I think I read in an interview that you said it was too little too late in another I heard you dismiss who it MP MCN as a homophobe for voting against it in 2012 I think that was in The Daily Beast at uh Toronto uh well if if I was told that someone did vote against it then I I I would I would say that yeah I think you know that he is actually a big proponent of of gay marriage that guy all the way to well then I stand by what I said clearly I was right I was just wondering if you had reconciled your thoughts about he's still a homophobe he's the one who needs to reconcile his attitude I I don't for voting against the part I I I you know I I no I still and I also still believe it is too little too late the there was I've got to remember her name because I I've mentioned this enough times it's getting embarrassing she's owed so much credit we wouldn't probably be here talking about this and seeing a film of it if it wasn't for the MP that actually campaigned for his pardon now the fact she had to do that I think is um apparent you know that that it wasn't something that happened automatically as a process of looking at the circumstance of thousands of men in that era and wondering how on Earth it was that we reached such a fever pitch mathus level of fear that we turned uh Prejudice on our own and lump together the threat of Communism um with men who were homosexual because of a certain group that the Cambridge spies that were homosexual and that that really heightened the persecution of homosexual men in the 50s so I when I get angry about it I get angry about that era and you know there is a context you know that there were many men uh who who were found out to be Communists who were gay because it was already something that was driven underground so it was a very fertile bed for any kind of um uh political descent of any form if you're if you if you're in a country that doesn't tolerate your sexuality and you look to something that potentially is different that could offer you more Humanity in the ideal of Communism then it makes sense that that might be a Ian we're getting into a huge metapolitical mess well I'm getting into a huge metapolitical mess by mentioning all of this now but in a sort of broad broad way it seemed to make sense why the fear was there but it doesn't justify the actions that that fear carries out as Prejudice you know in any form it can't be excused it could be contextualized and OD and that's good because we can hopefully then correct it and move on to a better place of understanding so so my answer to your question is um it is still in my opinion too little too late and um the only person who should be offering any kind of apology um or forgiveness is alluring to towards the people who treated him the way that they treated him he's the only person that has the power to forgive in my mind and he can't because we destroyed him and and the legacy of that part of his story for me is the fact that we need to keep a watch out for the fact this is not a period drama or in in its issues it's utterly relevant utterly you've got a woman who's who's who's um who suffers sexual Prejudice um uh she's she's you know she's treated she's belittled because she's a woman she's not given a place at the table or equal pay that is still the top issue for feminists today you have nationalism in Turkey in Greece with the Golden Dawn when it arriv IED and in the Middle East and in Russia where the the same the same minorities are scapegoated and gay men are right at the Forefront of that and you know you you this is not history teaches us sadly about things that we know are still prevalent in our in our time and that's because some of it is ingrained in our in our human instincts I think in the same way as conflict and love ingrained in our Instinct as human beings so it's it's a really important story for now it's not just a very sad tale of something that happened then it's something we can carry forward I completely agree with you it's on I completely agree with you but I also think that Lord MCN would actually agree with you if you read his reason for voting against the pardon had nothing to do we need to though move on because I've got a whole bunch of people with microphones over there so one moment we'll try to get to everybody if we can go right ahead I'd like to reiterate the sentiment that the the film was both a powerful portrayal of Turing by you and just a brilliant film but uh sadly no film can last forever and every film has its end if the film had been say 15 minutes longer was there anything in turing's life that you wish could have been included in that span of time we filmed well we we filmed a scene where the policeman comes into the house and uh and discovers his body um and the uh the death scene the the the suicide scene and uh uh the the the solution of cyanide that's been drunk and the the some of that residue left on a bitten apple on the bedst stand and uh it didn't feel right when we were doing it and it didn't feel right for Bill Goldstein and uh Morton tild in the edit because what we wanted to leave on was was something I beyond what you left within the moment of um Jubilation in a way of of consuming their work in the Flames of of their youth that that the image of them just throwing it all away they've done it and it doesn't matter because it it what they've done will live beyond the physical fact of it so it's a celebration when they're destroying their work at the end but more importantly the last scene of his life chronologically with with Joan uh before what then comes and I'll explain what I mean by that is is about somebody telling him something that he never had told to him in his life that he did matter that the fact that he was different different and and and wasn't normal was hugely important to the world and to everybody around him and no one got to tell him that in his life so to end it on that note to have somebody explaining to was in a way our our our way of thanking him within the structure of the film and acknowledging acknowledging our eulogy to him um um and then afterwards what he does is in a very calm manner he he walks to the to the door frame and with a limp which I I can tell you why I gave him a limp um he walks to the door frame and looks at the machine which is the embodiment of the love of his life Christopher and he smiles and in my mind what I was saying was I'm coming to see you now he turns off the light walks into the darkness and that's it that's what you see you know um I I yeah I think it's I I think was was was pretty spot on in his Judgment of that and there was a woman here who had the first hand up so go right hand first off thank you for bringing smell to life for me it's amazing that's right um since um since you brought so many uh fictional characters to life and real life characters if you could pick one one fictional character to bring to life what would it be and would you play it Patrick meos Edwardson orban's hero of a of a um of a five novel series is an extraordinary character I'd like to do that um there are a few others but I I'm saying one it's really hard I'm I'm really really crap at doing favorites be honest you to that I'd love to play that part yeah it's a wonderful beautiful I mean it's he's he's like a modern EV in war he's he's a really Adept um uh writer and the pros is so alive with subtext it's it's a gorgeous thing to read um you do visualize it when you're reading it and it's it's incredibly smart and funny and moving and uh yeah that that appeals um beyond that I'm not sure thank you pleasure okay um does someone already have a mic right now uh okay I can't see who that is but go ahead oh okay um hello I know that you're just such an amazing actor and you're really good hi I'm up here oh yeah okay we we can't see um I know that you're just such an amazing actor and you're really good at inhabiting your characters and I just was wondering is there a big relationship between you and writer you and director like of course um you and Stephen Moffett when you're working on Sherlock um yeah of course um but you know the relation is with the writer is is through the material if you're lucky enough to be working with a living and present writer it's it's a fantastic boom to be able to quiz them to ask them detailed and difficult questions um i' I've just been very lucky you know I've I've I've stumbled across the path at the right time of exceptional wres so it's it's hugely important it's it's a massive part of the artistic kind of um collaboration to work with with the people that are originating the material that you're writing uh that you're performing and obviously with directors as well who who craft that performance into something that is you know performable um I'm sort of wling but yeah uh I'm just where people are leaving um and you should don't feel bad about it it's it's very it's very late and I I probably should the truth is that I have also received a couple of signals um from from the Benedict Cumberbatch Camp because this poor man has not had sleep in many many many hours and much as we would love to keep you here probably for at least another hour because that's the number of questions that seem to be in the audience I know that we cannot so I just want to say to you that we are particularly grateful and if one can use uh Sherlock Holmes idea that you can only do reasoning once you have data you know you shouldn't theorize before you have the data you must have the data first and our data is that that the imitation game is a superlative film that your performance is of a caliber that goes even Beyond some of the best performances that I've seen lately and that you have made the extraordinarily generous gesture of spending an hour here with us and I theorize from that that we are not the only ones who are going to appreciate you this year Academy Award season's coming and we look forward to seeing you again thank you thank you for joining us my pleasure than thank you very much for coming thank you so much thank you thank you very much thank [Music] you

Channel: 92NY Plus

Views: 133,137

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, benedict cumberbatch, the imitation game, sherlock, star trek

Id: LSnFhU5T6Wk

Length: 49min 48sec (2988 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 17 2014