Writer/director Timm Kröger‘s brilliantly devised The Universal Theory (Die Theorie von Allem, 2023) is a feverish metaphysical noir, opaque, dreamlike, shot in exquisite monochrome, yet it fails in its pedestrian third act, leading us to a place where all its strange strands meet, and instead of ending in apt enigma — delivers an essay.
Nevertheless, it still lingers in the mind, days after watching.
It’s the year 1962, and Johannes (an earnest, perfectly-cast Jan Bülow), a German PhD student of physics, is heading to Switzerland, to a remote mountain hotel resort, his breakthrough twist on quantum theory in trembling hand, travelling alongside his stern disapproving mentor Dr. Julius Strathen (Hanns Zischler), who disputes the theory as mere fancy. They are attending a scientific congress, that is to be keynoted by an obscure genius from Iran, who came up with a what seems to be a theory of ‘everything’. Except this man never shows up. He is held at the border, not being given entry to the country, and is, furthermore, never mentioned again.
In this atmosphere of European low-scale dread and Alpine splendour, Johannes meets and falls instantly in love with a mysterious jazz piano player, called Karin (a wonderfully oblique
Olivia Ross), who can read his past out of thin air. The potent soup of intense scientific rivalry, international intrigue, and group LSD experimenting (yes, really), brings him surprising accolades by a colleague (and apparently arch-enemy) of his mentor Dr. Strathen, a jovial fellow by the name of Professor Blumberg (a mercurial Gottfried Breitfuss), who thinks that Johannes’ work on multiverses is pure genius, worthy of the Nobel prize.
Then, after what seems to be an exceptionally bad trip, involving moving patterns on carpets and hellish underground landscapes, Professor Blumberg winds up dead.
The next morning he is found in the snow, and the police descend on the resort.
Much in the manner of Spellbound (1945), with a overwhelming score that washes on the shores of each scene with dramatic gusto, no one is exactly what they seem to be, and neither is the very substance of three-dimensional reality. Except, instead of falling into dream material, as in Hitchcock‘s brooding thriller, we enter the world of parallel realities, peculiar cloud formations, underground tunnels, cold war spooks, deposits of uranium, and murderous doppelgängers — entirely mesmerised by a narrative logic that decidedly is not left-brained.
The landscape in which Johannes desperately searches for Karin (who vanished post-murder) is dense with symbolism, brimming with existential fear of post-war Europe, a continent divided — its horrifying past buried, yet palpably alive in memory and myriad minor detail. An ugly scar that never goes away.
It would be somewhat of unfair to mention what this unflinching unresolved past refers to, as there is merit in understanding it by oneself — this key to a story which seemingly has no single lock, or perhaps even a door as point of entry.
But, I found it to be not that hard to decipher.
The Universal Theory has a tale truly worth telling, but is far too rushed (and somewhat unsophisticated) in its didactic finale, eager to neatly explain the unexplainable.
It could have easily done without its wordy last thirty minutes, ending with only its final scene as conclusion. One I found to be entirely emotionally succinct.
★★★☆☆
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 