siri-4 Review of Copenhagen

Copenhagen (2002 TV Movie)

Copenhagen is a dramatic film, very cerebral, and most challenging

[9/10 · 31 August 2014]

Copenhagen is a challenging and powerful film that requires close attention. It builds up in rapid layers and, though it only has three characters, they each are articulate and extremely significant figures in their own right. The rise of Nazi Germany from 1933 on casts its shadow over events and the dynamic discussions and attempts at communication occurring. The audience is privy to both what people say, and their thoughts about what they are saying. It is based on the drama by Michael Frayn. Denmark is an occupied country. Hitler's forces have invaded and control most of Europe (Sweden, Switzerland and Portugal are neutral). Director Howard Davies also wrote the script for the film with Michael Frayn who wrote the original theater play. Frayn is present in a detailed prologue and epilogue to the body of the TV movie that provides a detailed description of the context of the play, and some historical background. In the essential question of why Werner Heisenberg went to see Niels Bohr in 1941 is re-assessed. There are also interviews with living relatives of the two greats that reveal that it is possible Heisenberg wanted Bohr to know that he was in charge of the German work on a nuclear weapon and could delay its achievement (in the end he claims they were two weeks away from success, while Bohr queries his neglect of the consequent radiation from an explosion that would kill them—another example of the human error that bedevils the practical use of nuclear energy). IN his final years Bohr penned many drafts of a letter to Heisenberg, that was never posted, and his family guaranteed for 50 years. Bohr's "confessions" were not available to Frayn when he wrote the play. Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) and Niels Bohr (1885-1962) first met in Gottingen, Germany, when Heisenberg was 20 and challenged Bohr's mathematical calculations at a public talk. Heisenberg would spend six years in Copenhagen working under Bohr. Bohr had first developed a theory of the structure of an atom that became known as Quantum Mechanics (not nuclear physics), for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1927. Their interactions stimulated Heisenberg to further develop Quantum Mechanics and the theoretical concept of the Uncertainty Principle in 1927 when he was 26 years old, for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1932 (not 1933 as said in the film, and an award which included recognition of his discovery of allotropic hydrogen).