I spent a chunk of the weekend listening to actors speaking in heavy British accents (and of course, I will finish the weekend with the newest episode of Downton Abbey) in two terrific films: Mr. Turner and The Imitation Game. If you can, see them both and it is even better to see them over the same weekend like I did, to contrast them.
Their similarities vastly outweighed their differences. The subject matter of both are men of genius, whose genius enables them to do their work, and yet sets them far out of the mainstream. Mr. Turner is about the eccentric 19th century painter JMW Turner. The Imitation Game's subject is Alan Turing, the mathematical genius who led a team that cracked the Nazi enigma code and changed the course of the war.
Both films were very well acted and in each case, a principal character was teamed with a woman that loved him, and he did not or could not love her back with the same completeness and intensity. Tim Spall did a masterful job of playing Turner and Dorothy Atkinson played his loyal housekeeper that loved him deeply. In The Imitation Game, Benedict Cumberbatch played Alan Turing and Kiera Knightly played the woman who loved him. Without spoiling the plot, Turing is a much more sympathetic character who is able to display empathy (and actually works at it) despite his eccentricities. Turner, while able to see the world differently than most, can inexplicable turn completely cold to people (like his own daughters) that would ordinarily matter most. Turing, on the other hand, is able to attach very intensely, which becomes his undoing.
I am fascinated by people of true genius, those who are separate and apart from us and can see the world in different ways. I have been fortunate to meet a few during my lifetime. They are eccentric, unusual, and sometimes difficult. Often, they have a difficult time managing relationships and their day-to-day affairs but you can often detect an intellectual vibrancy when they walk into a room.
Both of these films do a great job of capturing very different types of genius. But one could not help but note the similarities between them.
