Daily Dialogue — June 11, 2015

INT. COFFIN — A FEW MINUTES LATER

… Alan is now inside a coffin.

He’s KICKING AT THE WOODEN BOARDS ABOVE and SCREAMING TO BE RELEASED.

It’s not helping.

From above, we hear the familiar LAUGHTER OF THE SCHOOLBOYS.

REVEAL: The “coffin” is make-shift; the Boys have constructed it out of the broken floorboards of a half-finished classroom. Alan is buried underground, and they’re nailing him in.

ALAN TURING (V.O.): Do you know why people like violence? Because it feels good.

The THUMP THUMP of nails entering the boards.

ALAN TURING (V.O.): Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes… Hollow.

FROM INSIDE THE COFFIN: Alan goes silent.

The Boys pound away, but the silence unnerves them.

BOY #1: Alan? Alan?
BOY #2: C’mon don’t be such a kike about it…
BOY #3: Leave him to bloody rot.

The Boys LEAVE.

— The Imitation Game (2014), screenplay by Graham Moore, book by Andrew Hodges

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Voice-Over Narration. Today’s suggestion by Melinda Mahaffey.

Trivia: The official film website at theimitationgamemovie.com allows visitors to unlock exclusive content by solving crossword puzzles conceived by Turing in his lifetime.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Melinda: “There’s a lot of voice-over used in The Imitation Game, but I found this scene to be most effective. It’s well-written — the voice-over here effectively explains why Alan stops fighting without explicitly saying it. But I also like the contrast between emotional and dispassion. His voice-over throughout the movie is so intellectual, so distant and removed, but I think you see in scenes like this that he’s not the remote genius he pretends to be.”