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WORLD VIEW
S
A personal take on events
And the winner is:
not science
ome Hollywood stardust will sprinkle across the world of science
this week, in the build-up to next weekend’s Oscars ceremony in
Los Angeles. Uniquely in the history of the silver screen, two of
the leading contenders for Best Picture concern the lives of two great
scientists, mathematician Alan Turing and physicist Stephen Hawking.
Both films have been widely praised. But unfortunately, in terms of
shedding light on what made these scientists tick — or furthering the
art of film-making —
The Imitation Game
and
The Theory of Every­
thing
each leave a great deal to be desired.
The two films were produced in the United Kingdom, not in Holly-
wood. But they each feature a catalogue of clichés, of eccentric scien-
tists and true love, well worthy of Hollywood in its gory heyday.
You may say that it is too much to ask —
but I think scientists deserve to see major,
fact-based feature films about science pre-
sent their lives in ways that resonate, at least
to some extent, with the world of science as it
really is. Most of us can recognize the authen-
tic when we see it; in the case of these two
films, we don’t.
It is ironic that although Hollywood has
shown itself capable of producing, on occa-
sion, complex, postmodern masterpieces
such as 2004’s
Crash,
film-makers here in
the United Kingdom still churn out the sort
of sentimental slop that British satirists used
to make a living by sending up, a quarter of
a century ago. (I refer younger and non-UK
readers to the genius of the
Comic Strip
series.)
The Imitation Game,
Morten Tyldum’s portrayal of Alan Turing, is
the greater disappointment of the two. Benedict Cumberbatch’s per-
formance as Turing has been widely — and justifiably — lauded. But
the script, unfortunately, portrays Turing as a dysfunctional, almost
autistic, individual and trots through clichés of how a ‘genius’ treats
his peers with all the finesse of a children’s fable.
All we learn about the project to bust the German Enigma cipher
in the Second World War is that everyone was doing it all wrong until
our erstwhile, eccentric hero turns up, argues with everyone in sight
and relentlessly ploughs his own furrow, whatever that may be (we are
never told). The film is significantly weaker for saying almost nothing
about the nature of the problem, or about Turing’s role — relative to
others, inside and outside the project’s base at Bletchley Park — in the
conception and implementation of what we now call the computer.
It also groundlessly alleges that Turing’s homosexuality made him
turn a blind eye to a likely spy at Bletchley Park —
a piece of worthless and defamatory melodrama
NATURE.COM
that seems gratuitous, given the ample material
Discuss this article
provided by Turing’s real life story.
online at:
Greater emotional nourishment, at least, is
go.nature.com/6akuhq
Portrayals of science in the cinema are growing in sophistication — but not
exactly at the speed of light, says
Colin Macilwain.
forthcoming from
The Theory of Everything,
in which Eddie Redmayne
skilfully carries the viewer into the world of Stephen Hawking, as his
body is progressively ravaged by motor neuron disease.
Hawking is portrayed sympathetically but convincingly, and the film
addresses the great issues of his life outside science — the impossible
demands placed on his first wife, Jane, on whose memoir,
Travelling to
Infinity: My Life with Stephen
(Alma, 2008), the film is largely based,
and the lack of support offered to the couple from the outside world.
Some critics have said that the film ought to have been even harsher.
The book on which it is based is a softer version of Jane Hawking’s
earlier memoir,
Music to Move the Stars
(Macmillan, 1999), now out
of print. (Intriguingly, second-hand copies are trading on Amazon for
several hundred pounds.)
I enjoyed and believed this film — but it
makes only a cursory effort to describe or
address Hawking’s scientific trajectory. Given
his status as perhaps the world’s best-known
living scientist, there is something unsettling
about that.
Both films present a bombastic, simplistic
and ‘hero-takes-all’ picture of science — a pic-
ture that is still promoted heartily through the
Nobel prizes, and by much science writing.
I prefer the more jaundiced view taken by
Paul King’s family film
Paddington,
in which
geographer Montgomery Clyde is expelled from
his learned society for failing to kill and bring
back bears that he has found in Peru.
As has been widely noted, both audiences
and critical attention have been shifting from cinema to the smaller
screen, as television writers adapt to a twenty-first century in which
people are growing wise to the clichés foisted on them in the past.
A more-nuanced approach to storytelling has emerged in count-
less television series, from
Breaking Bad
to
House of Cards.
None of
these, so far, is built around the world of science, but a similar intel-
ligence shines through the world-beating science-based sitcom,
The
Big Bang Theory.
Trite as some of its scripts may be,
Big Bang
has a
stronger grasp than either of these movies of how science really works,
bouncing along on a melee of inspiration, treachery, serendipity and
teamwork.
Big Bang’s
barrage of cameos, from the likes of physicist Brian Greene
and even Hawking himself, speaks to its credibility and fan base inside
the scientific community. Its appeal carries an important message, too:
scientists are not circus freaks; they are just people, whose work lets
them express their inner nerd. It would be nice to see something about
science on the big screen that carried half as much conviction.
■
Colin Macilwain
writes about science policy from Edinburgh, UK.
e­mail: cfmworldview@googlemail.com
1 2 F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 5 | VO L 5 1 8 | N AT U R E | 1 3 9
WHEN WE SEE IT;
IN THE CASE OF THESE
TWO FILMS,
MOST OF US CAN
RECOGNIZE THE
AUTHENTIC
WE DON’T.
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved

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