Howard Davies – Copenhagen (2002)

“As a writer of brilliant comedies, where satire tosses and turns under sheets of exquisitely embroidered farce, Michael Frayn’s biggest hit came with the hysterical “play within a play” fiasco Noises Off. Film work such as the John Cleese comedy Clockwise and the touching TV play First and Last have showed off Frayn as a fine observer of people. But in Copenhagen he turns to history, and a moral conundrum so trenchant that at points it overtakes the carefully reconstructed plot in the viewer’s mind. For every visual image there is an imaginary imp hovering behind it asking us to see a wider picture.

The play remembers a meeting that took place in 1941 between two physicists, the Danish Niels Bohr and German Werner Heisenberg. As friends they had collaborated on crucial work that led to the atomic bomb, but World War II placed them on opposite sides. Heisenberg arranges a mysterious trip to see Bohr and his wife. The meeting that follows, rich in splendid dialogue and fine acting, tests our feelings on both the moral responsibilities of the scientist, and the link between a man in wartime and the country he unavoidably represents when in an alien land.

Bohr’s Denmark is a small, occupied state. Heisenberg’s Germany is a massive world power certain of victory in a war zone not yet tipped in the balance by America’s intervention. The two main protagonists have the weights of their own worlds on their shoulders, and in casting Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis, three careful and magnetic performers, this edgy production is in safe hands. The simple direction pleases too; the opening shots especially evoke a cold, doomy land, while the lucid, erudite language paints in the vivid colours between the greys.

As a stage play Copenhagen evoked a remarkable sense of place and time. On television we have the luxury of seeing the world the play inhabits first hand. But this in no way blunts the impact. For every visual image there is an imaginary imp hovering behind it asking us to see a wider picture. There lies Frayn’s triumph, and the secret of the play’s ability to haunt the mind long after it’s finished.”

Copenhagen (Howard Davies 2002).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 30 min
Size: 	1.40 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	718x576 ~> 1024x576
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 988 kb/s
BPP: 	0.192
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/1FE876359B64FCD/Copenhagen_(Howard_Davies_2002).mkv
https://nitro.download/view/AD523B388A1BD97/Copenhagen_-_A_Prologue_with_Michael_Frayn.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/D8152A378555A6B/Copenhagen_-_An_Epilogue_with_Michael_Frayn.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English