It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I see that a few comments just above mine come from people who read the play. I have not yet seen the film (the majority of comments encourage me to seek it out). I want to urge all those who commented positively at the top to read the script of the play (along with the long and enlightening postscript by the playwright). As those who saw the play on stage know, the action, which ranges over an immense set of times, places, thoughts and "versions" of reality, is conjured up through just a contrapuntal discussion amongst three "ghosts" (without any need to change physical setting). It is breathtaking and fascinating to follow the myriad changes of scene that are contrived just through the statements of each personage. Reading the script you have the luxury to go back over these changes and the ideas and alternatives invoked, just by reading back a few lines, and it is heady to experience the new inflections that are given by a new speaker to something just said by another. I think this must go by very quickly when you are watching the play or the film, and it is a wonderful thing to be struck by the new "spin" given by a new observer (that, too, is a reference to the physics! one learns so much about ideas and words that have become part of our everyday language) and then to retrace that spin at leisure, rereading the exchange that expresses it.A comment to the person who claimed above that only the London playbill mentioned the irony of Jews having been forced into practical applications of physics (and building the bomb) as they were forced out of the theoretical physics more highly valued in Germany: on the contrary this is explicitly discussed by the characters at least once and maybe more often in the printed play. One more reason to read it: you will be dazzled by all the interweaving references, interpretations and explanations that probably could escape notice as you are carried forward by live actors and their evanescent words.Also: as for Margarethe's comment about Bohr being the Pope and Einstein being God: I can hardly believe, as a commentator above suggests, that this was a cheap joke inserted by the playwright to raise a laugh from the audience. There is nothing cheap or facile about the written dialog in Frayn's play. In context that comment tells a certain truth about the development of the science of physics and also tells a certain truth about the psychology of Heisenberg and Margarethe's ironic view of him. Do read the play.

Over the years the meeting between two old friends, physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, which took place in Copenhagen during 1941, has been the subject of much speculation. In particular, Heisenberg's motives for calling the meeting have been scrutinized and brought into question given the nature of his work at the time on the Nazi's nuclear programme.The structure of the screenplay brilliantly examines the varying interpretations of what took place during the meeting in a way that borrows from Eisenberg's Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.I thought that the performances were, as you would expect from Francesca Annis, Daniel Craig and Stephen Rea, flawless, and despite the seemingly dry subject matter of a meeting between two physicists to discuss nuclear physics, I found the plot gripping.I found it extremely enjoyable and would recommend it to anybody who enjoys a thought provoking story (regardless of the extent of their knowledge of nuclear physics!)

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon.)Most viewers of this extraordinary play believe that it doesn't answer the question of why Werner Heisenberg came to Copenhagen in 1941 to visit his mentor Niels Bohr. And this is true: playwright Michael Frayn does not give a definitive answer to that intriguing question. But he does give an interpretation.We must go to the "final draft" of their recapitulation of what happened--the "their" being the three of them, Heisenberg, Bohr and his wife Margrethe, who appear as ghosts of themselves in the now empty Bohr residence. In the climatic revisionist scene, instead of walking away from Heisenberg in the woods, Bohr contains his anger and confronts his one-time protégé. He tells Heisenberg to do the calculation to determine how much fissionable material (a "critical mass") would be necessary to sustain a chain reaction.Heisenberg had believed without doing the calculation that the amount was somewhere near a metric ton. As he does the calculation in his head he realizes that the amount would be much, much less, only 50 kilos. This changes everything because it made the bomb entirely possible. Frayn's point is that it is far better that Bohr did not tell Heisenberg to do the calculation because if he had, it is possible that Nazi Germany would have developed an atomic bomb under Heisenberg's direction. But this does not answer the question of why Heisenberg came to Copenhagen. Margrethe has her own answer: he came to show himself off. The little man who is now the reigning theoretical physicist in Germany had come to stand tall and to let Bohr, who was half Jewish, know that he could save him from the Nazis.This is the "psychological" answer and it plays very well. Heisenberg, like most Germans felt humiliated by the defeat in the Great War and had suffered severely in the economic deprivations that followed. And like most Germans Heisenberg, who was not a Nazi, compromised his principles by acquiescing in Nazi rule because he believed that it would return Germany to "its rightful place" as an economic and military leader in the world. He came to Copenhagen in 1941 in triumph. His triumph, understandably, was not well received.The more blunt question of did Heisenberg expect to find out whether the Americans were making a bomb or to get Bohr to help with the German project is also answered in a psychological way. The answer is no, because he knew that Bohr would not help him even if he could. As it turns out at the time Bohr had no knowledge of what the Allies were doing. The other question, a question that would haunt Heisenberg for the rest of his life, was did he delay the German bomb project in order to prevent the Nazis from acquiring the bomb--as he claimed--or was the fact that they were not able to develop a bomb just a matter of not having the ability? To this question playwright Frayn's answer is that Heisenberg would have developed the bomb if he had been able. This answer is the generally accepted one based on the historical evidence, part of which comes from some careless words from Heisenberg himself that were recorded by British intelligence after Heisenberg was captured and sent to England. What Frayn does so very well in his brilliant play is show us that Heisenberg's need to succeed and his need to feel national pride would not allow him to behave otherwise.The direction of this PBS production by Howard Davies relies heavily on an interesting device. Bohr's wife becomes an objectifying factor who is able to step back from the emotional situation and to see both men clearly and to guide the audience toward an understanding of their relationship. Over the years, she and Bohr served as surrogate parents to Heisenberg. He was the little boy who came home to his parents in 1941 to say, Look at me. I am a great success. Only problem was his "success" could not be separated from the Nazi occupation of their country, and Heisenberg was too obtuse and insensitive to see that.In truth, Heisenberg was not entirely aware of his own motivation. He did not know why he came to Copenhagen. Neither did Bohr. But Margrathe did. An accompanying point to this idea is the story of Bohr bluffing Heisenberg and others during a poker game some years before. It appeared from the fall of the cards that it was extremely unlikely that Bohr had made a straight that would win the pot, and yet he kept on betting until all the others threw in, and then when he showed his hand, he had no straight. He had fooled himself. Frayn's position is that in believing he had come to Copenhagen for innocent reasons, Heisenberg was unconsciously fooling himself. Furthermore the fact that he had not done the calculation was equivalent to Bohr's not looking back at his hole cards to see what he really had.This is not an easy play, but the ideas are presented in a clear manner so that any reasonably intelligent person can understand them. Frayn employs an elaborate metaphor involving Heisenberg's famous uncertainty principle to elucidate the relationship between Bohr and Heisenberg. They are particles that will collide: Heisenberg the elusive electron, neither here nor there, the very essence of uncertainty, Bohr the stolid neutron. Davies has the two circling and circling one another, even chasing one another, as in a dance while Margrathe watches.I found the play moving and ultimately cathartic as all great plays should be. Davies' direction and the sense of time and place greatly facilitated my enjoyment. And the acting by Stephen Rea (Bohr), Daniel Craig, and in particular, Francesca Annis, was outstanding.

This film treatment of a play by Michael Frayne has an odd structure; essentially there are three attempts to tell the same story, wrapped around a subsequent ghostly appearance by the protagonists, Nils Bohr, his wife Margrethe and Werner Heisenberg. In this correspondent's education, Bohr, of the Bohr atom, and Heisenberg of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, were two of the giants of 20th century theoretical physics. The story revolves round Heisenberg's mysterious visit to his old friend and mentor Bohr in September 1941 in German occupied Copenhagen. Was Heisenberg, no Nazi but a patriotic German, trying to find out how far the Allies had got with nuclear fission? Was he trying to use Bohr to persuade the German High Command that building a fission bomb was too difficult? Did he just have the hots for Margrethe (herself a physicist)?In a way, the answer doesn't matter much; shall we say the ending is cloaked in uncertainty, but the acting is very fine and some of the dialogue sparkling. However, it is also a bit dull at times. For some reason Mr and Mrs Bohr are shown as inhabiting a vast belle epoc mansion (without a single servant) and the cast and camera wander round the building and its formal gardens in a fairly aimless fashion. Even as a film it would have worked with a just a couple of sets.Ironies abound in this story. The Nazis allowed Jewish scientists to work in the theoretical physics area thinking it less important than applied physics, so that by the time they were finally expelled to Britain and the US the same Jewish scientists had made theoretical breakthroughs which proved vital in the development of the atomic bomb. As Bohr points out ruefully, Heisenberg, working for the Nazis, never did anything to kill anybody, whereas he, Bohr, spent two years at Los Alamos after his escape from Denmark in 1943 helping out with the Manhattan Project. Yet it was Heisenberg who had to convince the world after the war that he was not a Nazi collaborator. On a personal level, Bohr and Heisenberg had a relationship going back 20 years, when Heisenberg, as a young student had had the termerity to challenge the (then) recent Nobel prize-winner's mathematics. Two people as smart as they were with egos to match were unlikely to have a smooth friendship, and so it turns out. Margarethe who apparently assisted Bohr with his work, is a bit of a spare wheel here, though Francesca Annis has such a good presence you hardly notice the fact. Stephen Rea as Bohr is wonderfully tired and world weary and Daniel Craig is very much the younger eager beaver as Heisenberg. I've not seen the play, but I suspect this property would work better on stage. Opening out the scenery is a distraction here. Still, as Bohr is wont to say, the ideas are `interesting', even if the questions posed can't really be answered.