[VIFF 2019] REVIEW: 'The Physics of Sorrow': A metaphysical and metaphorical journey
Adapted from Bulgarian Georgi Gospodinov's novel, The Physics of Sorrow is an animated short depicting the behaviour of the body and mind of Eastern Europeans throughout various points in history. Though the protagonist of Gospodinov's novel has no name, for director Theodore Ushev, a fellow Bulgarian and immigrant, you can feel this is personal.
Ushev takes his viewers full circle, from its factual beginning (“I was born in early January as a human being of the male sex…”) to a far more complex metaphorical ending (“I remember dying…”) as various other beings, including a human, a fruit fly and a late cherry blossom. It’s through this lens that Ushev, with the help of Canadian narrator Rossif Sutherland, travels from his birth in the ‘60s to his new surroundings in Montreal and ultimately his future death. It is a long journey with twists and turns and all about forging an identity. The Minotaur is used as a metaphor, the Greek mythical beast who lived in the Labyrinth.
It is an absolute visual treat with its encaustic paintings, a centuries-old method that Ushev had learned from his grandfather, using heated beeswax to create a kind of thick liquid that offers a layered effect with depth and shadow. Using shades of dark oranges, blues, browns and dark blacks, and with some sepia-toned archival footage weaved in, Ushev is able to take his viewers on an abstract journey that sprawls in all sorts of directions. The beauty of animation is that it can mesh together ideas and thoughts that seem to have little do with each other yet still serve as a logical transition. Gospodinov's novel was believed to be difficult to adapt due to its meandering threads and lack of traditional story structure.
But this is also where The Physics of Sorrow falls a little flat; there are sad, romantic and happy moments, but many are too fleeting to really nail down a specific thought or idea. We live through decades of emotions and memories in a relatively short amount of time, and its use of modern music with “The Safety Dance” felt like an odd choice for such a weary story. It had a prominent “role” in the film, even though it was played within the context of meeting a girl he had yearned for at a disco but never become close with, before quickly moving on to the next step of his life.
The Physics of Sorrow is one of the National Film Board of Canada’s internal candidates for Best Animated Short Film at the Academy Awards, a category in which they’ve previously garnered six wins and 36 nominations, including Ushev’s Blind Vaysha in 2016.
The Physics of Sorrow gets three stars out of four.
