#‘The Theory of Everything’ Review: Visually Striking German Science Caper Fails to Captivate

Have you heard of a movie about a brilliant quantum physicist who travels to a remote location so he can test a groundbreaking theory that could change the world forever? It’s shot in breathtaking black-and-white, and features Nazis and a doomed romance.

If you’re thinking of Oppenheimer, you’re wrong by a good two decades (in terms of the time setting), as well as a good hundred million dollars (in terms of budget). And yet, like a smaller, distant cousin to the Christopher Nolan blockbuster, German director Timm Kröger’s The Theory of Everything (Die Theorie Von Allem) is also an artfully made, ambitious period piece where reality sometimes bends to the laws of modern physics.

However, the similarities end there. Nolan’s movie was science-fact, remaining as close to historic events as technically possible. Kröger’s second feature is more of a genre-jumping experiment, combining Hollywood sci-fi and film noir caper motifs with 1960s arthouse aesthetics to tell one mindboggling story. The result is more admirable than captivating, losing its way in old school hijinks (wacky professors, evil spies, a femme fatale) that grow outlandishly phantasmagorical as the plot thickens. After premiering in Venice’s main competition, more festivals and European theatres await.

Like his 2014 debut, The Council of Birds, Kröger’s gorgeously made follow-up is a small-scale fantasy that toys with Germany’s troubled and mysterious past. Birds was set in the 1930s, when the Nazis began to take power. Theory takes place in the early 60s, nearly two decades after WWII, yet there still seem to be a few fascists lingering around old Europe. (The postwar black-and-white fantasy aesthetic also recalls Lars Von Trier’s 1991 film, Zentropa.)

After a mock TV talk show prologue, the film skips back to 1962, where the gifted young physicist, Johannes Leinert (Jan Bülow), tags along with his thesis advisor (Hanns Zischler) to a quantum mechanics conference in the Swiss Alps. When they arrive at a remote, snow-nestled lodge that looks like The Shining’s Hotel Overlook, they learn that the scientist who was supposed to demonstrate an earth-shattering new theory has gone missing. This is, in fact, just one of many, many strange things that occur as Johannes gradually learns the truth about a place he may never manage to escape from.

Kröger dips into a basket of movie references to fuel the narrative, using high-contrast monochrome images, courtesy of Roland Stuprich, that recall how films looked at the time, and a nonstop score from Diego Ramos Rodriguez that makes nods to great studio composers like Bernard Herrmann or Max Steiner. As such names hint, Hollywood was a heavily Germanic place back in its heyday, and those influences are abundant in The Theory of Everything, a German thriller with an ostensibly retro Hollywood feel.

The effect can prove to be more gimmicky than compelling, especially once Leinert crosses paths with a dark and beautiful jazz pianist (Olivia Ross) who inexplicably knows details about his past, striking up a relationship that seems doomed from the start. He then runs into an older physicist (Hanns Zischler) who was allegedly found dead in the mountains, only to be resurrected, cloned or who knows what, when he reappears. The story takes so many twists and turns that it eventually loses its credibility factor, as well as any real emotional impact. But as a stylistic exercise, it has some powerful moments.

Early on, the director and co-writer Roderick Warich give us a hit that what’s happening in the Alps could have something to do with the multiverse — a notion Johannes mentions on the talk show before he walks off the set. For anyone who’s been to the movies these past five years, the m-word may immediately cause some eye rolls: Between Everything Everywhere All at Once, Dr. Strange, the animated Spider-Man flicks and countless other movies and series, the concept is fairly worn-out by now. In any case, it’s no longer intriguing, which makes this film’s novelty factor less obvious.

Where Kröger does display some originality is in the way he combines stunning imagery — the director is a DP himself whose credits include The Trouble With Being Born — with a plot recalling B-movies of the epoch, especially postwar sci-fi flicks. In that sense, his latest effort feels closer to Tim Burton or Spielberg than to Nolan, whose movies are shot and cut in the most contemporary way possible. The theories in Theory may not all pan out, but the film showcases a director who’s able to give a new voice to old Hollywood tropes.