The Imitation Game · written by Graham Moore · 2014

After another failed midnight run, the team abandons the attempt and walks outside, frustrated that they still lack a solution.

Scene 82 of 130 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Hugh Alexander

Act oneAct twoAct three

Begins 1:16 into a 1:57 film

The story so farBefore scene 82

At Bletchley Park, Alan Turing must persuade a skeptical team to build a machine that can break Enigma before the war is lost, while concealing the self the law condemns.

Scenes 1–12
Turing is investigated as a guarded outsider in 1951, then enters Bletchley in 1939 looking for the puzzle he can solve.
Scenes 13–30
He sees the scale of Enigma, believes a machine can solve it, and grows isolated from colleagues who make little progress.
Scenes 31–50
Churchill’s order gives Turing authority and his half-built machine advances toward sustained work.
Just before
Scene 79
Young Alan encodes an ‘I love you’ letter for Christopher and runs to meet him when the new school term begins.
Scene 80
Christopher never arrives; Alan’s hope collapses and the bullies who previously attacked him surround him again.
Scene 81
Nock asks whether machines can think; Turing explains that different thinking does not make a machine mindless, then invites Nock to question him about the war.
Scene 82
This scene

82INT. BLETCHLEY PARK - HUT 11 - NIGHT - 1942

Alan and his team — Hugh, John, Peter — anxiously stand before Alan’s huge machine as it CLACK CLACK CLACKS, ferociously loud.

The gears are spinning, current is flowing through the wires, and the team stares at it, taking turns compulsively checking their watches.

ON ALAN: This is going to work. This has to work.

Suddenly...

... DING. The chime announces the stroke of midnight.

HUGH ALEXANDER

Damn it!

Everyone is pissed, frustrated.

Alan looks as if he’s about to rip his own hair out: Why won’t this damned thing work?

As the machine CLACKS on, oblivious, they all walk outside: