2023-09-03 18:10:24
In his competition film, Timm Kröger delves deep into film history. At the Venice Film Festival, the German director talks about his inspirations.
Venice.
The German film in competition at the Venice Film Festival pays homage to film noir. Director Timm Kröger evokes memories of legendary filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles in “The Theory of Everything”, which tells the story of a physics conference in the Swiss Alps. In addition to the 37-year-old director, the leading actors Jan Bülow (“Lindenberg! Do your thing”), Olivia Ross and Hanns Zischler (“Munich”, “The Flambéed Woman”) came to the premiere on Sunday.
The black and white thriller is set in the Swiss Alps in the early 1960s. The doctoral student Johannes Leinert (Bülow) travels there with his doctoral supervisor (Zischler) to a physics congress. But once at the hotel, mysterious things happen. The congress does not take place because the main speaker is absent. A German physicist dies under mysterious circumstances. And suddenly reappears. Johannes also meets a mysterious pianist (Ross) who knows things about him that he never told anyone. Eventually, he gets on the trail of a secret that has taken root deep beneath the mountains.
In the style of Hitchcock
“There were a bunch of references,” said Kröger (37) on Sunday in Venice. “A lot of them were conscious, a lot more were unconscious. Hitchcock is maybe the ultimate reference. And we did all of this to take viewers into a world that feels really alien, but at the same time familiar.”
In the style of Hitchcock, Kröger uses tried and tested means to create an ominous atmosphere in his very stylized film. Strong contrasts between light and shadow cause unrest, dramatic orchestral film music creates tension. In addition, there is a femme fatale, as we know it from classic films of the noir genre.
Only the opening scene of the film is in color. The audience sees an older Johannes sitting in a television program and presenting his book. It is “The Theory of Everything” in which he writes about his experiences in 1962 in the Swiss mountain village. In it he drafts the “many worlds theory”, as he explains: The theory that there are multiverses – other worlds that exist alongside ours. In the end, this allows us to interpret a lot of what happens in the film.
Kroeger, who comes from Itzehoe and now lives in Berlin, also works as a cameraman. In this function he was involved in Sandra Wollner’s highly acclaimed film “The Trouble with Being Born”. Kröger was already a guest in Venice in 2014. At that time, “Zerrumpelt Herz”, his graduation film at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy, was shown in a sideline.
Like that film, “The Theory of Everything” takes place in the German past. Superficially, the thriller is about physics and paranoia. On the sidelines, however, it is also about German history and the legacy of National Socialism. (dpa)
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