Edutainment
Movie Review: ‘The Imitation Game’ Shows How Peer Collaboration Affects A Workplace
Every educator who is working in collaboration or is planning to do so must watch The Imitation Game at least once. The plot provides a great insight into remarkable achievements that can be achieved when differences are kept aside and people are ready to recognize each other’s potentials.
The Imitation Game (2014) is set during the Second World War when Nazi Germany has the most advanced code communication machine called Enigma. To break the codes produced by Enigma, the British Military Intelligence appoints a team of Mathematicians and Linguists from around the world, who’re the main characters in the film.
This team comprises of some of the best minds of the United Kingdom and includes genius Mathematician named Alan Turing. Turing finds his teammates as inferior and feels that they will only slow him down. And so, he puts out a crossword in the newspaper and invites people to work with the team if they can solve it. Joan Clarke, a Cambridge-educated woman, is then selected. However, she immediately gets home-arrested by her parents who don’t support her working with men.
Alen, as her responsible senior, goes out of his way to convince Joan’s parents to let her work for the grand mission. He does so because he recognizes the potential in Joan and doesn't care if it’s a woman entering his team. This shows his foresightedness and how he thinks ahead of his times, identifying women as intellectually at par with the men. Also, we think it’s an apt example of giving every gender an equal opportunity.
On the other hand, Joan realizes that Alen lacks social skills and that’s the very reason why the rest of the team is not fond of him. Therefore, she decides to help him win his colleague’s trust by teaching him about compassion and human bonds. Gradually, everyone now works as one team and shows advancement in making a machine as powerful as the German Enigma. This incident proves how powerful the two-way learning process can be to bring about positive changes in one’s workplace.
As the plot progresses, we see that the Military Intelligence loses trust in Alen, threatening to fire him from the team. It is this time that we see the power of team-building and unity, as his colleagues stand up for him and are willing to resign to keep Alen in the team.
ScooNews believes that this movie is an excellent example of Peer Collaboration and that how colleagues, who possess different intellectual capacities, can make up for each other to keep things running smoothly at their workplace. Also, the way Alen tries to include Joan in this team in a time when women were considered intellectually inferior is another example of Inclusive Peer Collaboration.
Every educator who is working in collaboration or is planning to do so must watch The Imitation Game at least once. The plot provides a great insight into remarkable achievements that can be achieved when differences are kept aside and people are ready to recognize each other’s potentials.