FILM & TV

Great Minds

Two biopics examine the weight of genius.

by Fan Zhong

The Imitation Game.

Two biopics out this month suggest that genius is its own burden. *The Theory of*Everything(November 7) is a portrait of the marriage of Jane (Felicity Jones) andStephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne), the physicist who sought to explain the universe even as Lou Gehrig’s disease caged his dynamic mind inside a listlessbody.The Imitation Game(November 21)deciphers the English mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), who struggled to crack the Nazi transmitter code—and to overcome the stigma of his homosexuality. Turingwon the first battle but ultimatelylost the second—he committed suicide in 1954