Reviewed on September 2nd at the 2023 Venice Film Festival – In Competition. 118 Mins
Cast: Jan Bülow, Olivia Ross, Dabvid Bennent, Hanns Zischler, Philippe Graber, Gottfried Breitfuss
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director: Timm Kröger
In Irish Cinemas: 13th December 2024
Set against the imposing backdrop of the Swiss Alps, Timm Kröger’s The Universal Theory is a metaphysical mystery that blends paranoia, conspiracy, and murder. A young physicist, Johannes (Jan Bülow), journeys to a 1962 scientific congress on quantum mechanics. However, what begins as an intellectual pilgrimage quickly spirals into a labyrinth of strange occurrences and unsettling revelations. Kröger’s debut feature, released by Oscilloscope Laboratories, is an enigmatic homage to classic cinema, steeped in intrigue and brimming with references that lend weight and a compelling sense of disorientation.
The Alpine setting is as much a character as the cast, evoking a rich lineage of symbolic and narrative touchstones. It nods overtly to Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, with its existential ruminations amidst a mountain sanatorium, while drawing equally from Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Particularly resonant is the famous ski sequence in Spellbound, where snowbound tracks trigger repressed memories—an image mirrored in Kröger’s snowy landscape of fractured realities and hidden truths.
Johannes, who is still refining his elusive thesis on the existence of multiple universes, sees the congress as an opportunity to engage with a prominent Iranian scientist whose groundbreaking theory could validate his work. Accompanied by his sceptical mentor, Dr. Strathan (Hanns Zischler), Johannes approaches the conference with high hopes. But when the scientist fails to appear under inexplicable circumstances, Johannes is left to navigate a series of unsettling events on his own. The atmosphere of the summit turns strange and stifling as other attendees retreat to the slopes, leaving Johannes to encounter Dr. Blumberg (Gottfried Breitfuss), another physicist whose keen interest in Johannes’ theory unsettles Strathan. Blumberg and Strathan share a fraught history as former students of Werner Heisenberg, grappling with the fraught legacy of their mentor, a figure whose work intersected with the shadow of Nazi science.
Amid these tensions, Johannes becomes captivated by Karin (Olivia Ross), a glamorous jazz pianist whose presence is as enigmatic as her connection to him. Though initially distant, Karin’s inexplicable knowledge of Johannes’ life draws him closer, their brief affair unravelling into obsession. As Johannes’ fixation deepens, so does the surreal mystery of the congress: a scientist’s bizarre death and subsequent reappearance, strange cloud patterns, secret tunnels within the mountain, menacing government agents, and avalanches that defy natural explanation. These threads form a tangled web that Johannes pursues with increasing desperation, each discovery amplifying his unease.
The Universal Theory wears its influences proudly, evoking the romantic obsession of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the taut suspense of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the noirish despair of The Third Man. Diego Ramos Rodriguez’s lush, Bernard Herrmann-inspired score crescendos in swirling orchestral motifs contrast sharply with the film’s eerie, minimalist sound design. Kröger prioritises mood and atmosphere over clear exposition, drawing viewers into Johannes’ fractured psyche. Yet, this atmospheric focus often leaves the narrative elusive and impenetrable, more suggestive than explanatory.
Shot in striking high-contrast black-and-white and framed in widescreen CinemaScope by cinematographer Roland Stuprich, the film visually recalls mid-century noir and the haunting elegance of classic Hollywood. However, the deliberate artificiality of the performances and period aesthetic creates a dreamlike effect, as if the film is a memory of cinema rather than a faithful recreation. Johannes and Karin’s romance, marked by fatalism rather than genuine chemistry, underscores the film’s sombre tone but feels underdeveloped, adding to its sense of detachment.
The film’s carefully constructed style and the stiff, deliberate nature of its performances—particularly from the two leads, whose doomed romance feels more dictated by inevitability than genuine passion and unfolds far too swiftly—combine with the charged nostalgia of its period aesthetics to create a hypnotic, fugue-like sensation. Despite its probing into the fractures of reality and the mysteries of parallel universes, The Universal Theory reveals only the inherent elusiveness of truth itself and the director’s deep reverence for his cinematic influences. In this sense, it feels appropriate that Kröger is less concerned with recreating the authentic essence of classic cinema than with conjuring a dreamlike memory of it, an impressionistic echo of history. This illusion is executed with notable conviction, yet the intricate and overly knotted narrative he weaves feels more like an elaborate sleight of hand than true cinematic magic.
Overall: 5.5/10
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