UNIVERSAL THEORY, THE
(director/writer: Timm Kroger; screenwriter: Roderick Warich; cinematographer: Roland Stuprich; editor: Jann Anderegg; music: Diego Ramos Rodríguez; cast: Jan Bülow (Johannes Leinert), Olivia Ross (Karin Honig), Hanns Zischler (Dr. Strathen), Gottfried Breitfuss (Prof. Blumberg), David Bennent (Kommissar Arnold), Philippe Graber, (Kommissar Amrein), Emanuel Waldburg-Zeil (Johnny, page), Dominik Graf (narrator), Dirk Bohling (talk show host); Runtime: 118; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: David Bohun, Sarah Born, Tina Borner, Heino Deckert, Lixi Frank, Rajko Jazbec, Timm Kroger, Dario Schoch, Viktoria Stoipe; Oscilloscope Laboratories; 2023 -Germany/Austria/Switzerland/in German, French, Swiss-German with English subtitles)
“Creative arthouse sci-fi noir.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
German filmmaker Timm Kroger (“The Council of Birds”), a former cinematographer, is director and co-writer with Roderick Warich of this creative arthouse sci-fi noir. It tells a fatalistic love story that could have been better executed.
It conjures up the aesthetics used by directors as different as Hitchcock, Marker, and Resnais.
In 1974, Hamburg, Germany, a failed, callow young doctoral student in physics, Johannes Leinert (Jan Bulow), is a TV talk show guest promoting his new mysterious book The Theory of Everything, and pushes back at the skeptical host (Dirk Bohling) who finds his work merely science fiction.
In the book, it’s 1962, at the height of the Cold War, as the student Leinert attends a physics congress at a ritzy hotel in the Swiss Alps with his stern mentor, Dr. Strathen (Hanns Zischler), who finds his student’s belief in multiverses to be nonsense.
When the congress’s Iranian guest speaker is a no show, Leinert gets a chance to meet the esteemed and jovial Professor Blumberg (Gottfried Breitfuss), the rival of Strathen, who sides with him on his multiverse theories. Leinert also meets the enigmatic Frenchwoman hotel jazz band pianist, Karin (Olivia Ross). Karin connects with Leinert, and knows about things from his childhood he’s never told anyone. They fall in love, but she disappears and he desperately tries to reconnect with her.
There are avalanches, a weird cloud formation, an old uranium tunnel is inhabited by a secret society from the Third Reich that dabbles in time travel, and several murders occur, including one of Professor Blumberg (who despite being killed shows up at times alive).
The physics student becomes obsessed with quantum mechanics, and makes that his life’s work.
It played at the Venice Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 9/10/2024 GRADE: B
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