“The Theory of Everything”, interview with director Tim Kroeger and actor Jan Bulow

September 9, 2023

Tim Kroeger, director and Jan Bulow, actor, "The Theory Of Everything". A sinister story of false memories, real nightmares and impossible love, in pure Hitchcock style.

"The Theory of Everything", interview with director Tim Kroeger and actor Jan Bulow Angelo Acerbi

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With the thriller “The Theory of Everything” by Tim Kroeger, the director Tim Kroeger brings us in the the Swiss Alps , in the 60’s, were a crime happens at a physics’s congress: a lot of interesting premises that make the film an unexpected surprise, in this year’s competition at the Venice Film Festival. “The Theory of Everything” by Tim Kroeger has been presented in Competition at the 80th edition of Venice Film Festival.

Hitchcock rules

Tim Kroeger wanted to make a visual tribute to Hitchcock : “The Theory Of Everything” is a precise visual and editing tribute to the master. Very interesting the idea that Kroger had about the music and how to use it: these genre films in the 50’s and 60’s had a specific employment of music as a comment and also as a narrative help, very present but never too much, use he reproduced faithfully.

A unconscious scapegoat

Jan Bulow, playing Johannes, the young physicist at the center of the intrigue, tells us how the simplicity of his character was a tool he put in the hand of the director, as being simple and pure sometimes is not a curse but can be a strength.

Plot

1962. Johannes Leinert, together with his doctoral advisor, travels to a physics congress in the Swiss Alps, where an Iranian scientist is set to reveal a “groundbreaking theory of quantum mechanics”. But when the physicists arrive at the five star hotel, the Iranian guest is nowhere to be found. In the absence of a new theory to be discussed, the physics community patiently turns to skiing. Johannes, however, remains at the hotel to work on his doctor’s thesis, but soon finds himself distracted, developing a special fascination with Karin, a young jazz pianist. Something about her seems strange, elusive. She seems to know things about him—things that he thought only he knew about. When one of the German physicists is found dead one morning, two inspectors arrive on the scene, investigating a homicide case. As increasingly bizarre cloud formations appear in the sky, the pianist disappears without a trace—and Johannes finds himself dragged into a sinister story of false memories, real nightmares, impossible love and a dark, roaring mystery hidden beneath the mountain.

Written by: Angelo Acerbi

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