Richibi’s Weblog

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yesterday – a Sunday afternoon, much

like Sundays the way they were

supposed to be, gracious, cordial, if

somewhat reverent, but, especially,

and quite specifically, as specified in

its prevailing Good Book then, restful

– a friend and I watched a second of

my ten favourite movies

 

Copenhagen, a three-character play

that had won the Tony in 2000, had

been made into a film a couple of

years later, with Daniel Craig, no

less than Daniel Craig, yes, that

Daniel Craig, if you’ll pardon my

gushing, the most recent, and

therefore ,to my mind, nearly

definitive James Bond, with a

couple of other less well known,

though supremely capable, 

performers

 

Daniel Craig is Werner Heisenberg,

the German physicist who’d studied

with Niels Bohr, his Danish tutor,

both becoming, individually, great

names in the history of 20th-Century

nuclear physics, right up there with

Einstein and Oppenheimer

 

the year is 1941, Denmark is

occupied, Heisenberg, though

earlier a beloved student, is

now a political enemy, of his

earlier mentor, Niels Bohr

 

conflicting, apparently, ideologies,

incompatible, clashing, loyalties,

fell even apparently indissoluble

intimacies

 

it is allowed by the German High

Command that Heisenberg visit

Bohr in Copenhagen, at his home,

to, perhaps, glean information

about the atom bomb, its

composition

 

Heisenberg, if not necessarily

coerced, is, however informally,

tasked with getting whatever

relevant information from Bohr,

who is not directly involved with

either the German or American

pursuits, his interest is essentially

theoretical, to the extent that he

can maintain that pose despite

intense international pressure

 

they meet, they met, an actual

historical event, Michael Frayn

the playwright, imagines their

meeting, which has never been

recorded, the play is a work of

the imagination, but of an

imagination of the very highest

order, and philosophical insight

 

Schubert provides most of the

music, sets the tone for the

film, the much more refined

atmosphere of polished Europe,

the Europe we look toward, like

Romans looked toward Athens,

for their moral and aesthetic

pre-eminence, a Europe that

profoundly reverberates still in

our, however globalized,

collectivity

 

listen

 

try hard to see the movie

 

 

R ! chard