Copenhagen

Based on Michael Frayn's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Howard Davies' PBS-aired film adaptation revolves around a famous meeting in Copenhagen in September 1941, between two world-renowned physicists: the younger German wunderkind Werner Heisenberg (whose famous "uncertainty principle" pointed out that the act of measurement itself will alter the observed scientific results at the subatomic level of quantum mechanics) and the older Niels Bohr, a Jewish scientist living in Nazi-occupied Denmark (Bohr would eventually contribute to the creation of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos). To say that the meeting was strained between these two titans of science--who earlier shared a father and son-like relationship, but later found themselves on opposite sides of the political fence--is putting it mildly, especially since both knew or suspected that the other side was working on an atomic bomb. The questions of why Heisenberg secretly went to visit Bohr in 1941 and what the two men said during this meeting (that ended badly) have been a hotly argued scientific mystery for the past 50 years, and Frayn brilliantly tackles the subject in his three-person play (here starring Daniel Craig as Heisenberg, Stephen Rea as Bohr, and Francesca Annis as Bohr's wife Margrethe), which finds the principals trying again and again to deconstruct the meeting from their conflicting memories, motivations, and suspicions. As an excellent bonus, the DVD features a nicely orienting prologue and a revealing epilogue to the film, interviewing Frayn and scientists, and including archival stills and footage. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)