Imitation Game director: A gay sex scene wouldn’t have enriched Turing’s character
The director of ‘The Imitation Game’ is the latest to hit back at critics whoĀ have suggestedĀ that it downplayed Alan Turing’s sexuality.
Gay World War II codebreaker, Turing ā often hailed as the grandfather of modern computing ā was convicted of āgross indecencyā in 1952 after having sex with a man, and was chemically castrated, barred from working for GCHQ, and eventually driven to suicide.
Several people including Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred as Turing in the film, have defended the lack of a gay sex scene.
The film’s director Morten Tyldum is the latest to defend the lack of a gay sex scene, telling Variety magazineĀ he thinks it wouldn’t have enriched the character.
Asked whether there was a version of the script where Turing had a male lover as an adult, Tyldum said: “First of all, the time period weāre all focusing on, he didnāt have one. He described it in his own words as a āsexual desertā in a letter. The whole thing is his relationship with Christopher [Turingās male crush seen in flashbacks in grade school], about unfulfilled love.
“He had people he had sex with, yes ā especially in the time after the war, when heās living in Manchester. The break-in that happens in the film is a male lover, which is discussed. It was actually someone he paid to have sex with. It was more of a hustler.”
Continuing, to address whether or not such a scene would have “enriched” the character, the director said: “Not really. The whole movie, the way itās structured, we donāt know anything about this man. The whole investigation starts because heās hiding something, but heās not hiding what we think.
“It canāt start off with him having sex. It was not because we were afraid it would offend anybody. If I did the structure and had this thing about a straight character, I would never have a sex scene to prove that heās heterosexual. If I have a gay character in a movie, I need to have a sex scene in it ā just to prove that heās gay? Iām not shying away from it. His whole relationship, how he falls in love and the importance of him being a gay man, was all about secrecy.”
Cumberbatch attracted criticism after heĀ defended the absence of gay sex in the film, saying: āIf you need to see that to understand that heās gay, then all is lost for any kind of subtle storytelling. Itās not something that needed to be made obvious.ā
However, The Sunday Times reported that there was indeed a sex scene involving Turing and another manĀ present in early drafts ā but it was mysteriously left out of the final version.
