Joyce Glasser reviews The Universal Theory (December 13, 2024) Cert 15, 118 mins. In cinemas If you are not a theoretical physicist, your connection to the multiverse might be via video games or special effects laden action movies adapted from Marvel Comics. Or made by directors like Christopher Nolan, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert whose Everything, Everywhere All at Once won, in our universe, an Oscar. Now we have Timm Kröger’s beguiling German language feature that strives to bend – or diffract – our minds like wave particles. If it ultimately promises more than it delivers, there are reasons to see The Universal Theory. It’s thick with atmosphere, Hitchcockian influences, the creepiest snow-bound hotel since The Shining, Roland Stuprich’s spectacular cinematography and composer Diego Ramos Rodríguez’s sumptuously dramatic score. In no other film about multiverses is the main character a physicist writing a doctoral thesis on multiverses. It’s so obvious, isn’t it? Actually, it’s rather ingenious. When Johannes Leinert (Jan Bülow) fails to get his degree, his need for vindication is such that he writes a book called, you guessed it, The Universal Theory. And when, on a book launch tour in 1974, a talk show host refers to the content as “sci-fi” and then as a “story,” an uncomfortable Leinert corrects him. It is neither science fiction (that was the publisher’s commercial idea) nor a story (Leinert personally experienced it all). Clearly annoyed that the incredulous host is going for laughs from the live audience at his expense, Leinert storms out of the studio, but not before appealing on camera for Karin to contact him. Ah, yes, chercher la femme. From the book launch scene we enter a long flashback that dramatises the book’s contents. We are suddenly in Germany, 1962, when the cold war is raging, but the scientists who worked for the Third Reich are still around, and at least two are heading with Leinert to a conference in the Canton of the Grisons in the Swiss Alps. Leinert leaves his doting, widowed mother (Imogen Kogge) to accompany his discouraging PhD supervisor, Dr Julius Strathen (Hanns Zischler), to the conference. Although Dr Strathen claims that he promised Leinert’s illustrious grandfather that he would make him a Doctor of Physics, Strathen seems determined to ruin him. Dr Strathen does not hide his disdain for his student’s “metaphysical rubbish.” The last person on earth Dr Strathen wants to see is also on the train heading for the conference. And when the jovial Professor Blumberg (Gottfried Breitfuss) hears about Leinert’s thesis, he encourages him, offering the grateful student “another pair of eyes.” Discovering an invitation to the conference in the train, Leinert reads that the guest speaker and host of the conference, Dr Sharam Amiri, plans to reveal a groundbreaking theory in quantum mechanics. Blumberg laughs that no one has heard of his Amiri. When the three men arrive at the hotel the subplots, twists, and head scratching begin. Things start to get strange when they learn that Amiri cannot make it to the conference and the hotel has no reservation for Leinert, another unheard-of scientist with a groundbreaking theory to reveal. Then, there’s Leinert’s instant attraction to Karin Hönig (Olivia Ross) a mysterious pianist with the band that plays unenthusiastically to an indifferent and dwindling audience of dinner guests. Although Karin seems keen to avoid Leinert, she seems to know all about him. Have they met before? Maybe in some other universe, but here and now Karin denies it and lovestruck Leinert would never have forgotten. Two children, a pretty young girl named Susi (Vivienne Bayley) play in the snow on the mountains. Susi becomes trapped in an underground mine shaft – a uranium mine that will play a bigger role tied in with the canton’s tectonic thrust faults. She is rescued by her best friend Johnny, (Emanuel Waldburg-Zeil) the hotel owner’s ill-fated son. Much later, Leinert (note his first name is Johannes which can be translated as Johnny) goes in search of the mysterious Karin. He reunites with a now adult Susi (Vivienne Bayley) and the two have a sexual relationship. Themes of doubles are imposed on scenes that reappear with some changes. These can grow tedious, particularly when we’ve lost hope of ever figuring anything out. Physicists might find parallels between the occurrences in the film and the theories of quantum mechanics. The Universal Theory is definitely a visual thought experiment if not exactly of the level of Schrödinger’s cat. And speaking of that famous cat, don’t be surprised when Professor Blumberg dies and yet seems to be alive, leading Leinert and the audience to wonder if he really died or Leinert, who himself has been through the ringer and saved from death, imagined it. And what about Karin who disappears? In Schrödinger’s thought experiment the cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead while it is in a closed box, unobserved. But Leinert’s inability to find (observe) her doesn’t mean she has disappeared or died. Tormented though Leinert is by his quest for this woman, her fate might be linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not have occurred.
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