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'Sara'S' review: Anchored by a powerful script, this simple film breaks the conventions of the feel-good template

Jude Anthany Joseph's third feature, after Ohm Shanti Oshana and Oru Muthassi Gadha, released on Prime Video at midnight today. This seemingly feel-good film, also seemingly made in limited spaces and with a shoestring budget, tackles a concept and issue never tested before in Malayalam cinema  circles. In Sara'S, we follow the life of Sara Vincent (Anna Ben), a young, bubbly, yet unapologetic filmmaker who struggles to make it big in the industry. She continuously assists male directors and is in the scripting works of her dream film. Sara has decided, from her school days, that she would not bear any kids. This is when she meets Jeevan (Sunny Wayne); her relationship with him subsequently brings her ideology and decision into a confrontation with the established norms of society, family and child-rearing.  Anna Ben in Sara'S The best aspect in which Sara'S has excelled, without doubt, is its hard-hitting taut script. Debutant Akshay Hareesh deserves praise for managin

The Imitation Game - perfect tale of an Enigma

 Out of the tens and thousands of minds that worked to change the world, Alan Turing's mind was one which worked uniquely and appalling to human identity. The Imitation Game illustrates this great man's mind which questioned the limits of human conscience and somewhat predicted what the future would be.



 In 1952, detectives enter Alan Turing's house as part of an investigation surrounding a robbery, although nothing is found. It was then he was caught for "gross indecency". The story then drifts back to 1928, where an overly bullied, young but genius Turing, is instantly infatuated when he sees a faired haired classmate, Christopher Morcom; this leads to the realization that he is a homosexual, then a criminal offence. The story soon takes a leap into the World War 2 era (thus making it a nonlinear narrative), where Turing, after earning his Cambridge doctorate, joins a bunch of high IQ "nerds" at Bletchley Park, appointed to crack the uncrackable puzzle at the time- the Enigma machine, which the Nazis used to send encoded messages to attack the Allies. The rest as you know is history.
A still from the movie. Pictured: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode
 The Imitation Game mines through the depths of human identity, of which Alan Turing's is the best example. Other than the nonlinear narrative the film follows, the movie has a double face- one, the challenges Alan Turing faces when he tries to break Enigma, and the other where he tries to hide his sexual orientation. He was a superhero, but unlike those ones which had unimaginable powers, Turing's power was in the mind, in which he performed feats of extraordinary nature.The tagline of the above poster says, " The true Enigma was the one who solved it."
 The film is pushed to its peak with the stunning performance of Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the role of Alan Turing, the typically arrogant genius, disobedient cryptanalyst and one who calls himself the "best mathematician of the world". Cumberbatch has provided the best performance of his career, because he plays perfectly a man who wanted to reach closer to the human emotions, whilst thinking like a machine himself. The tagline of the above poster says, " The true Enigma was the one who solved it." That is enough to prove that Alan Turing was a real puzzle and so does the movie turn out to be, thanks to newcomer director Morten Tyldum and  screenplay writer Graham Moore.
 Keira Knightley plays an efficienct supportive role as the only female worker at Bletchley Park, Joan Clarke, with whom Turing shared a public-known romance yet discreet friendship.
 Finally,it is not fair to conclude that The Imitation Game is another film that pops up just before the Oscar Season.
 With a challenging fact-based story and stellar performances, especially that of Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game is the perfect Great Man biopic (although with a few inaccuracies), dedicated to the man who himself was an "Enigma".
 Run Time: 114 mins

 MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some sexual references, mature thematic material and historical smoking)

 Reviewer©rating: Five stars


 Reviewer-The Blog©

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