Copenhagen
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15 November 2021 - Hilton Head Island
You remember Elsinore? The darkness in everyman's soul?
Sometimes there are films that one needs to watch at a particular time. Copenhagen (2002) is the story of a meeting of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in 1941. Bohr discovered quanta and Heisenberg built quantum mechanics out of them. Bohr had lost his eldest son and in the 1920's Heisenberg had lived in Copenhagen to work with Bohr. By 1941 Danemark was conquered and Heisenberg was at the head of the Third Reich's atomic bomb program. There is great debate about what occurred during their meeting in 1941 at Bohr's home at the Carlsberg brewery. This film plays upon all the different layers present in a relationship between two people. Bohr is one of the few Nobel laureates who, like Marie Curie, also had a child win the prize (Aage). But Bohr was Doktorvater to many more, including Heisenberg. I wonder what language they really spoke at the meeting. The film was produced by the BBC from a Micheal Frayn play, but I did see the most recent Bond movie auf Deutsch so it's not hard to image Daniel Craig speaking Heisenberg's mother tongue. The movie plays on the relationship between father and son and how it can be strained. My own father who I am now here taking care of betrayed me in my hour of greatest need. And my own son does not think very highly of me even though we were able to collaborate on software this Summer. Like Bohr and Heisenberg collaborated. I once imagined myself to be a Bohr, a father of greatness, an enabler of others' success. But it seemed I've ended up more of a Heisenberg, out of favor and shunned after letting my head get too big. Niels was even on my shortlist of names for a son if I ever had one, but we settled on the honoring the man who unified electricity and magnetism instead. The writing of Copenhagen is truly better than the acting, so I don't know that I'd recommend the film over a performance of the play if you can find one. In the end I must accept that I'll never have a rapprochement with my father, but will I have one with my son? I'm uncertain.
