The Universal Theory Review

It’s not so long since we were immersed in the multiverse. Bombarded by it, even, courtesy of Marvel and their superheroes but, while their popularity has waned and audiences have drifted away, the concept resurrects itself this week in a completely different setting. Super powers are nowhere to be found in The Universal Theory, a mystery surrounds the science behind it and it’s all presented in a way that’s a cinephile’s dream come true.

The cold war and echoes of WWII cast a long shadow over a scientific conference in early 60’s Switzerland, one that keeps being postponed because of the non-arrival of its key speaker. One of the delegates is physics student, Johannes (Jan Bulow), whose efforts to write his thesis are constantly derided by his supervisor, Doctor Strathan (Hanns Zischler) and his red pen. He starts to feel he’s living in his own parallel universe when he meets attractive pianist Karin (Olivia Ross) who knows things about him that he’s never talked about. There’s mysterious doppelgangers, strange cloud formations over the surrounding mountains, underground secrets and gruesome deaths. But in which dimension?

Getting to the root of the strange events and the twisted, enigmatic narrative is a challenge for the audience, let alone the film’s central character. But, whatever conclusions you reach, the feeling that the story comes second to its telling never goes away. Its decidedly retro style is established right from the start, with an older Johannes appearing on a parody of a TV chat show a decade later. The palette is straight from the early, lurid days of colour television, the host unnecessarily snarky, and then we’re thrown back in time by the sharpest and coldest of black and white photography. Most of director Timm Kroger’s work has been as a cinematographer and he’s showcasing it here – crisp and stark one moment, sinister and broodingly atmospheric the next.

Yes, there’s shades of noir running through his film, but there is something more. It’s the most extraordinary homage to a number of filmmakers, with Hitchcock at the top of the pile. Those spectacular Swiss mountains could so easily be Mount Rushmore, the relentless score could have been written by Bernard Herrmann and you half expect at least one of the men in dark overcoats to be missing the tip of his little finger. Hitchcock fans will lap up all those references and more and as a tribute to the master filmmaker, it’s a meticulous pastiche that any film lover will find hard to resist.

The convoluted narrative, in the meantime, gets swallowed up by the style, the photography and the sound so that when the conclusion arrives, it’s something of an anti-climax and one that’s taken too long to get there. But when a film is so crammed with cinematic qualities that make it a pure joy to watch, you’re prepared to forgive it for that shortcoming and, to be honest, any others as well. Come for the mystery and physics, if you must, but you’ll stay for the indulgent cinematic experience.