Review: The Theory of Everything (2023)
by Princess Kinoc of Film Police Reviews
There is something quite interesting about the way ‘The Theory of Everything’ plays out, but in a way that the interest fizzles out quickly towards the second half. Do not be confused, as it is not in any way a prequel to the semi-biographical film on Stephen Hawking. Although it plays on the metaphors of time, its only similarities are that it discusses the potential of quantum mechanics and its effects on a person’s life.
There is something about this film that I cannot seem to pinpoint. It’s not that bad, but I cannot say if it is a good film compared to its obvious inspirations and references. The director, Timm Kröger, had this to say in his Director’s Statement of the film during its screening at the Berlinale in 2023: "What attracted me was an amalgamated memory-image of cinema, by turns strange and entertaining—sort of as if Hitchcock and Lynch, and many others, known or forgotten, made love on the carpet of an old hotel lobby—where “utility music”, like Bernard Herrmann’s, somehow plays both to dramatic irony and genuine, heartfelt emotion. Is this the tragic tale of an undiscovered genius, or are we observing the paranoid delusions of an obsessed fool? This film invariably does both."
Let me try to summarize the film’s plot. The film opens with not one but two dreams. When it finally gets to the real world, we see two physicists, student Johannes Leinert (Jan Bülow) and his doctoral advisor, sitting on a train and discussing quantum physics. They are off to the Swiss Alps for a physics convention to see an Iranian scientist who claims to have concocted a groundbreaking theory of quantum mechanics. Upon their arrival at the five-star hotel, they soon realize that their special guest had not arrived due to some problems with his passport. Odd, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a conversation more interesting on physics or quantum mechanics than the way these two have done it on the train. This perhaps sets off the notion that the film is going into mystery in deep territories for later, so let me leave that aspect in the dark for you.
To keep up with lost time, the rest of the physicists at the convention enjoy the views of the Alps and take up skiing. Ironically not wanting to lose time, Johannes stays at the hotel to work on his own “Theory of Everything”. There is some talk, some inspiration of wanting to earn a Nobel Prize for Physics with whatever he is trying to achieve during the convention, but there is something that bothers him in the hotel. Something that wants to distract him, despite wanting to finish his work. Yet, in some strange setup and build-up, we get to see that he is distracted by the hotel’s lovely French-speaking jazz pianist, Karin Honig (Olivia Ross), who soon reveals that she can speak in German. Immediately drawn by her elusive persona, and how she seems to know him, despite him knowing a lot about the Universe, he cannot seem to remember where or how he met her. On the other hand, a German physicist, Professor Blumberg, is found dead the next morning. What initially was thought of as a skiing accident has now turned up as a homicide case. To add to the first oddities of the film, strange occurrences happen beneath the Alps. Two children, who I initially thought were younger versions of Johannes and Karin, are witnesses. They’ve been out in the cold (literally) longer than we are supposed to know what had happened to the missing Iranian scientist.
Kröger is on point in his references to film noir directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Aldrich, David Lynch, and François Truffaut, but only in memory. He adds a bit of mystery to capture the essence of the genre, and yet I don’t think he was as successful as the filmmakers he drew inspiration from. The film is neither a mystery nor a love story. As the director says in his statement, it is an observation of how one obsesses over his own genius. And yet the film is driven by so many plots and twists and turns that I don’t think it holds any kind of tangible thought that leads back to Johannes being a mad genius. He is in love and he wants nothing more to do with any other theories than to get back to the woman he desires. I understand that this has something to do with the story capitalizing on the fact that we might live in multiverses. I do believe that this will be entertaining for some, especially with the stylistic cinematography by Roland Stuprich. The film is supposedly set two decades after the war, which makes its noir aesthetically appealing, but it is far away from the likes of current noir-inspired films like Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War, where it stays faithful to the genre without mish-mashing different ideas into one film.
At some point, I wanted to think that perhaps this film drew inspiration from Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée (The Jetty), but the difference between these two is that Marker set the tone of the film from the onset that this will be a sad film about two lovers fleeting. He gave us a mission to look at the film and wish that he would be back in time, into the arms of the one he loves at The Jetty. He could do it in under 28 minutes, and yet Roderick Warich, Timm Kröger’s scriptwriter, tried expanding the same storyline in 118 minutes… And yet they did not come close to accomplishing the same astonishing feeling that Marker left me with in those final moments at The Jetty. I think it is safe to say that I am generous enough to make the assumption that the whole inspiration might have come from La Jetée after all.
