When you go to the movies, you expect the movie to create a world that you can immerse yourself in, that you can step into. Sci-fi is a beautiful way of doing that.
I thought I knew who Alan Turing was. I've always loved history, and I was actually shocked by how little I actually knew. I was amazed this wasn't common knowledge. Why wasn't he on the front covers of my history books? He's one of the great thinkers of the last century, and he was sort of pushed into the shadows.
World War II was the last 'pure' war. It was purely heroic. There was someone who tried to conquer the world, who tried to exterminate people.
If you want the human psyche, how we deal with humans in these situations, WWII is a very tangled place to go.
To me, it's mind-boggling to think that homosexuality was forbidden up until 1967.
I love when people say 'Imitation Game' is such a crowd pleaser.
I don't know if it's a sadistic side or whatever, but you take characters and put them in really awful situations and make them go through that. And it's very satisfying as a director to explore that, to tell those stories and to explore those themes, because it is so human.
Our film society back home is so different from here. Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language. It's just figuring things out and understanding the codes and how the system of Hollywood compares to that of Norway. We don't even have agents. There's no studio system, no managers.
Making a movie is universal. Directing a movie is universal; it's a universal language.
To me, Alan Turing was a mystery - it was sort of like something I needed to unravel. And he was also obsessed with puzzles. So I wanted to make the movie like a mystery, like a puzzle that you're piecing together.
