Joel Edgerton plays a physics professor who keeps finding himself in alternative versions of Chicago on “Dark Matter.”
Apple TV+
In one of the many, multiverse versions of Chicago we see in the mind-bending and dense and at times exhilarating Apple TV+ limited series “Dark Matter,” two main characters meet in a restaurant with a wrap-around view that is perched on the top floor of a futuristic skyscraper that stretches so high it’s literally above the clouds. In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, a glass etching tells us telling us where this meeting is taking place:
“THE SPIRE CHICAGO”
Fantastic! I’m not sure if anyone outside Chicago will get the reference, as it’s been a decade and a half since the wildly ambitious Chicago Spire project was abandoned, leaving an infamous crater behind, but it’s a cool touch. (Last month, construction began on a two-tower project at the site called 400 North Lake Shore Drive — but in the alternate Chicago of “Dark Matter,” the Spire lives and thrives.)
Other versions of Chicago are unveiled in “Dark Matter” through a spectacularly rendered blending of cinematography and VFX, and they range from the idyllic to the dystopian. Based on the bestselling 2016 novel of the same name by Blake Crouch (who serves as showrunner) and shot in the Chicago area, “Dark Matter” is a visually stunning and heart-grabbing journey of the mind and heart featuring show-stopping performances by Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly, who (along with a number of other cast members) are tasked with playing different versions of the same character and succeed in creating fully formed personas. It’s elevated acting.
Also, not gonna lie to you, there are times when the storyline goes so deep down the rabbit hole you’ll feel as lost as the characters themselves. As is the case with many a universe-hopping story, you just have to trust in the writing to take you through the murky waters until all (or least most) becomes clear.
In the “real” and seemingly ordinary world where the story kicks off, Edgerton’s Jason Dessen teaches physics at the fictional Lakemont College and lives in Logan Square in a warm, autumnal-toned home with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), who manages an art gallery, and their teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley). When Jason joins the celebration at the Village Tap (“played” in the series by the Damen Tavern) for his old friend Ryan (Jimmi Simpson), who has won the prestigious Pavia Prize for his groundbreaking work in physics, we get the sense that while Jason is content with his life, he has a sense of yearning, of wondering what might have been had he decided to focus more on career and less on family.
Walking home that night, Jason is attacked by a masked man who kidnaps him and sedates him. When Jason wakes up, he has somehow been transported to a different multiverse in which he ended things with Daniela some 15 years ago to concentrate on his work and he eventually developed the technology that can put a human being in a state of superposition, i.e., to be in two places at the same time. It’s some kind of an extension of the Schrodinger’s Cat theory and I think the Copenhagen Interpretation, but don’t quote me on that.
What’s important is that Jason is now in a world in which he forms an alliance with a stranger named Amanda (Alice Braga), who seems to know him quite well, but when he makes contact with Daniela, they haven’t seen each other in years, they have no family and she’s on a different life path.
Over the course of nine episodes that weave this way and that, much of “Dark Matter” is an “Inception” meets Homer’s Odyssey meets “It’s a Wonderful Life” adventure in which Jason tries to make his way back to his original existence. In the meantime, a DIFFERENT version of Jason — let’s call him Jason 2.0 — has insinuated himself into Jason’s life, but Daniela and Charlie begin to suspect something isn’t right. Why is Jason acting so differently?
Jason and Amanda find themselves caught in a kind of time-loop liminal space where each time they open a door, they find themselves in a different version of Chicago, populated by a different Jason, a different Daniela, a different Charlie, sometimes no Charlie. (It’s kind of great that when we get a glimpse of a Utopian Chicago, it’s basically the current version of the Riverwalk, only with more skyscrapers in the background.)
Edgerton and Braga have a great buddy-movie chemistry together, while Jennifer Connelly’s Daniela, no matter what the multiverse, is so luminous and warm and kind that we understand why Jason will stop at nothing to get back to the life he once had with her — even if it means killing himself. Well, not himself, but that OTHER Jason guy.