All language subtitles for The.Physics.Of.Sorrow.2019.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG

[Siren wailing]

- I was born
in early January, 1944.

[Baby crying]

- I was born
in early January, 1944,

as a human being
of the male sex,

in a catacomb doubling
as a bomb shelter.

My mother, pregnant with me,
had hidden in its labyrinth.

English planes had bombed
the small village

above this ancient
Byzantine burial place.

[Bomb exploding]

I was born in the winter
of 1968 in Bulgaria,

in a world full of hope.

I remember the year 1968
in detail, from start to finish.

The revolution,
the Prague Spring,

the Russian tanks...

- I have always been born.

- I was born as a fruit fly,
two hours before sunrise.

I'll die this evening
after sundown.

I still remember
the beginning of the Ice Age

and the end of the Cold War.

In both epochs,
the sight of the dying dinosaurs

is one of the most unbearable
things I have seen.

I remember being born
as a cranberry shrub,

as a nightingale,

as a ginkgo biloba,
a cloud in July,

an early cherry blossom
frozen by a late April snow,

as a snail.

I am us.

- I am us.

- But there is only
childhood and death.

Between the two, nothing.

I'm approaching the border.

Through the window of the train,
I see the trees of home.

In a flash between
the 6th and the 7th tunnel

of the railroad
I've known forever,

I see the waterfall
I always looked for as a child.

[Train chugging]

[Men and women chatting,
indistinct]

- Come, come,
ladies and gentlemen!

See the great python,

3 metres from head to tail
and from tail to head!

[Man laughing]

- The circus is back
in our village.

A magician makes
my hat disappear.

[Audience cheering
and applauding]

- Step right up!
A child with the head of a bull!

A marvel like no other!

The Minotaur of the Labyrinth,
just 12 years old!

[Audience member laughing]

- Instead of buying
cotton candy,

I get into the tent.

It's dark inside.

It's like in the labyrinth.

Such a sad looking boy.

I wonder why there are no
children in Greek mythology.

The only ones
that ever appear get eaten.

Chronos, Tantalus,
Tereus, Zeus, Demeter,

they all ate their children.

And the Minotaur
hidden away in the labyrinth

devoured 7 virgins
every 9 years,

the Minotaur imprisoned
in a labyrinth by King Minos.

shame of his family,

offspring of the queen Pasiphae
and a bull.

Enter the hero Theseus,
intent on killing the Minotaur.

The Minotaur's sister, Ariadne,

gave Theseus a sharp sword
and a ball of string.

A terrible battle ensued.

[Growling]

I'm trying to unwind Ariadne's
thread in my labyrinth.

An alarm clock, a toothbrush,
a doll, a toy car,

a woman's hat, a make-up kit,
an electric razor, a pipe...

What could contain such
a collection of random things?

A suitcase, most likely.

To whom would
that suitcase belong?

A woman? A man?

A girl, because of the doll?

Or maybe a boy,
given the toy car?

It doesn't matter.

I'm dumbstruck,
watching the circus acrobats.

There's a girl
who must be my age.

[♪ Drumroll ]

She gets up
on her father's shoulders.

For a moment, my heart stops.

And then she leaps into the air:
one, two and a half!

[♪ Drumroll ]

A huge smile on her face.

[Audience cheering
and applauding]

She's pretty,
the little acrobat.

[Door opening]

"I'll lock you up
in the basement

if you're not back by 8:30,"

says my father.

That was the worst punishment
of my whole childhood,

to be locked in the cellar,

in the dark, in the cold,
with the rats and spiders,

like the Minotaur.

But even that threat
couldn't stop me

from jumping on my old bike

and pedalling across town with
my friends to the fairgrounds

to see the circus
and complete our collections

of bubble-gum wrappers,
Western movie photos

and plastic toy soldiers.

I met my acrobat princess
on one of those escapades.

By day, she worked
in the shooting gallery.

She let me have free turns.

And later we went off
to have ice cream.

[♪ Tous les garcons
et les filles
by Françoise Hardy ♪]

Two days of bliss!

On the last evening,
before the circus left town,

we sat in her caravan.

We blew bubble-gum bubbles.

That's when I got my first kiss.

Her lips were hotter than fire.

Her name was Plamena.

[Insects chirring]

I didn't sleep
a single second that night.

When dawn broke,
I set off to say a last goodbye.

I mounted my bike and rode like
crazy through the empty streets.

[Engine revving]

I came to the spot where
the circus tent had been.

But the circus had left.

[Birds chirping]

There was only the sand
of the circus rings

and the bubble-gum wrapper.

She was gone,
and I never saw her again.

My only souvenir
from my first and greatest love

is the bright paper wrapper
of that bubble gum.

[Door closing]

Needless to say,

the basement was waiting
for me when I got home.

I didn't care.

I clutched the gum wrapper
against my heart,

thinking about
my pretty acrobat.

I often looked for that circus,

with its family of acrobats
and my Plamena.

I'd take my bike

and ride it to the ends
of the earth to find her.

Sometimes, it seemed like

I could still
touch her black hair.

She had different names.
She spoke foreign languages.

Sometimes, we'd smile
at each other after.

Other times, she'd chase me
with a knife.

Once, she lit a cigarette
and just walked away.

But I never, ever got a
bubble-gum wrapper at the end.

That's how I knew it wasn't her.

I began to get
used to the darkness.

To stop being afraid
of the dark,

I turned off all the lights
in my bedroom.

I came to like it.

In the dark,
I can make up anything I want.

It's like being at the movies.

I hate it when
my father comes in

and turns the lights back on.

I remember my first
real encounter with death.

[Birds chirping]

I was in our yard,

watching my grandfather
try to fix our old motorbike.

Suddenly, he dropped
like a brick.

My parents took me
to my cousin's.

He was the only one
with an army of tin soldiers,

when all the other kids

had cheap plastic soldiers
and Indians.

Later, my uncle came to get me.

He said: "He's dead."

For me, death will always
look like a little tin soldier.

[Thudding sound]

[Soldiers chanting]

[♪ Classical music playing ]

Years later, there I am,
a soldier as well.

Standing in front of us
in the morning,

Major Batsanov repeats...

[Batsanov speaking
foreign language]

"Things are gonna get worse.
They're not gonna get better.

So this is a great day
for you cockroaches."

The young soldiers
are impressed.

The older ones
are mostly thinking about

how to get over
the barbed-wire fence at night

to spend a few minutes
with a woman.

I was never good at gymnastics,

but one thing I learned
in the army

was how to clear
a barbed-wire fence.

If you weren't an acrobat,

you'd either wind up in the hole

or your balls would
catch on the barbed wire,

flapping up there like a flag.

Under the command
of Major Batsanov,

we all became acrobats
in the circus of desire.

A garter belt,
a can opener,

a toaster,
a typewriter, a radio.

Could this be
a museum warehouse?

The list continues.

The Bible, the Quran,
Homer's Iliad,Dante's Inferno.

Sound clips of cartoon
characters like Popeye

and hog-calling champs.

Recordings of the voices of
Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin,

Benito Mussolini
and Franklin Roosevelt.

Microfilms and projectors,

with electric generators
to operate them.

A writer's den? No.

It's a time capsule.

All these objects were buried
50 feet underground

on September 23, 1938,

in the world's
most famous time capsule,

engineered by
Westinghouse Electric

for the New York World's Fair.

A plate on the capsule
was engraved with these words:

"Not to be opened
for 5,000 years."

This craze for preserving time
in containers broke out

just before
time itself confronted us:

The Second World War erupted
just a few years later.

Major Batsanov:

"Things are gonna get worse.
They're not gonna get better."

"So carpe diem it is,"
I muttered to myself,

a bit too loud.

Major Batsanov had
keen hearing: "What?"

"Carpe diem," I repeated.

For insulting
a superior officer,

latrine duty
and 3 days in the hole...

with no shoes and no lights.

Instead of jumping the fence
to see my new Ariadne,

I spent that night in the dark,

punished for the few words
of Latin I knew.

[Man whispering, indistinct]

I'm still there in the dark,

instead of being with
the woman of my dreams,

the one waiting for me
at The Blue Café...

I decide to jump out the window
and escape.

I slice my foot.

I run to my Ariadne.

Of course, I leave a trail
of blood in the snow.

There was no red thread
in the labyrinth.

Ariadne didn't give a damn

whether Theseus
made it out or not.

He cut his own foot to leave
a trail in the labyrinth.

That is how
he found his way out.

[♪ The Safety Dance
by Men Without Hats ♪]

[Men and women chatting,
indistinct]

♪♪ We can dance
if we want to♪

♪ We can leave
your friends behind♪

♪ 'Cause your friends
don't dance♪

♪ And if they don't dance♪

♪ Well, they're
no friends of mine♪

♪ I say we can go
where we want to♪

♪ A place where
they will never find♪

♪ And we can act like we come
from out of this world♪

♪ Leave the real one
far behind♪

♪ We can dance♪

♪ Dansez!♪

I didn't find
my Ariadne that night.

She left with some rock star

instead of waiting
for her soldier.

I told myself: "Big deal!

She's not the first.
She won't be the last."

♪ The night is young,
and so am I♪

♪ And we can dress real neat
from our hands to our feet♪

♪ And surprise 'em
with a victory cry♪

♪ I say we can act
if we want to♪

♪ If we don't,
nobody will♪

♪ And you can act real rude
and totally removed♪

♪ And I can act
like an imbecile♪

♪ I say we can dance,
we can dance♪

♪ Everything is out of control♪

♪ We can dance,
we can dance♪

♪ We're doing it
from wall to wall♪♪

I saw her a few years later.

I couldn't believe
I'd cut my foot for her.

A list of my collections...

little plastic soldiers, badges,
commemorative matchboxes,

Western movie photos, marbles,

Bi-Bib Turkish
bubble-gum wrappers,

a collection of pictures of cars
from those bubble-gum wrappers.

All these things
stayed in the family home

when I immigrated to Montreal.

No childhood artefact
or memory crossed the ocean.

I started a new,
object-free life,

an abstract existence...

sitting on the floor
of an empty apartment,

two suitcases,
a telephone by my side

and a chair found in the alley.

I spoke neither French
nor English.

I had chosen
to move to Montreal,

as far as possible
from my country, my family,

my memories, my childhood,
my loves, my belongings.

When you move, objects are
deprived of their everyday use.

They're in a cardboard box
labelled "kitchen,"

"bathroom,"
"bedroom number 1."

Farewell.
A new apartment.

New farewells.
The moves of my student years.

Post-divorce move.

Moving to other countries.

Coming back.

A new apartment.

An entire life can be told
as a catalogue of moves.

[Birds chirping]

I learned how to read English
in the Côte-des-Neiges cemetery.

One could say it was the dead
who taught me how to read.

I was walking along a path
among the tombstones.

The first words I learned:

peace, eternal, here,
born, died,

God, memory.

Nervously, I trace
the outlines with my finger.

And names, many names....

Carpe diem.

Here, I'm nobody.

I don't even know
my own name anymore.

Here, my name translates
3 different ways.

Plato said that
objects and people

are deeply connected
to their names.

Since I have 3 different names,

I must be connected to
3 different versions of me.

I am us.

- I am us.

♪ ♪

- No, I don't feel
like a stranger here.

[Birds calling]

We are all immigrants.

Immigrants, if only
from our childhood.

We've all left it behind,

with its playthings, marbles,
toy-car collections.

In the end,

the only place I really
feel at home is on a plane,

between two countries,
between heaven and earth,

even if I do feel alone
in my narrow seat.

Aisle or window?

It has no importance.

I grab my suitcase.

There's a sticker on it.

There's a grocery store
in Montreal called Bucaresti.

Since the Cold War,
time has stood still there.

All the goods are the same ones

we had in the last years
of communism.

Today, they aren't even found
in their country of origin.

Some are manufactured
in small factories

in the suburbs of Montreal,

with identical designs
on their labels.

They feed the nostalgia of
Eastern European immigrants.

Romanian soap,
Hungarian paprika,

Serbian ajvar,
Soviet kefir and candies.

It's more museum
than grocery store.

The museum of nostalgia
and sorrow.

[Phone vibrating]

That's where, suddenly,

I receive a message
from my mother:

"Your father is sick,
hospitalized. Call home!"

I'm at the cash register,

paying for my ajvar
and kashkaval.

The English-speaking cashier
addresses me in Romanian.

I answer in Russian.

[Dial tone]

I assemble my own time capsule
in a suitcase.

It will contain
a Bi-Bib bubble-gum wrapper,

a photo of a targa-top
Lamborghini Silhouette,

a tin soldier,
a jar of ajvar.

[Train chugging]

The train
approaches Kyustendil,

the town in which I was born.

As always, my heart is pounding.

Will my father
be there as usual,

waiting at the station?

We arrive.
The train comes to a stop.

The old station
with its century-old trees.

[Brakes screeching]

Time has stopped here.

Only my father ages
in this unchanging town.

Every country has
its Major Batsanov.

An entire army
of Major Batsanovs

keeps order in this world.

The Batsanovs lead
and give orders.

They don't ask who or why.

If a commissar commands
the destruction of the world,

Major Batsanov will give the
order without a second thought.

[Man shouting
in foreign language]

"Nuclear!" Batsanov calls out,
"Nuclear bomb!"

It's the signal for us
to put on our gas masks on.

We've got 12 seconds.

If you can't get it on,
you're dead.

In my mind, that's how long
it takes for the world to end:

exactly 12 seconds.

Those who can manage to get
their masks on will survive.

Everyone else will die.

I wonder if
my father will manage

now that his reflexes
have slowed.

[Man breathing through mask]

With the gas mask, he looks
a lot like a Minotaur.

What do you call
the compulsion to make lists,

to tell stories through lists?

A fear of forgetting?

My father had that illness
at the end.

He would go out
and lose his way in the streets.

Most often, he could be found
at the train station,

standing there,
watching the trains.

My worst nightmare
is that, one day,

I'll end up just like that,

except at an airport, watching
the planes land and take off.

[Women talking on PA,
indistinct]

I won't remember
where I was headed.

Worst of all, I'll have
forgotten where to return.

♪ ♪

Hotel rooms are perfect,
memory-free places.

The ideal hotel room
betrays no prior presence.

Cleaning after check-out

is above all
the wiping out of memory.

Nothing is as sterile
as forgetting.

[Child laughing]

I did everything I could
to make my family work...

but my sorrow, instead
of dissipating, deepened.

I became increasingly withdrawn.

At those times, all I wanted
was to spare my daughter.

I started accepting
every invitation I got

for film festivals.

Other countries, other cities...

same sorrow.

Before I left, my daughter
gave me her favourite dinosaur.

I've kept it with me ever since.

A few years later,
I read in her diary...

"My father and the dinosaurs

disappeared
at the same time."

How are you?

How's it going?

How am I?

I'm not.

Period.

There must be something
that remains, though,

something you could use
to start over.

The day after the Apocalypse,

there will be no news,
no newspapers.

How ironic.

The most significant event in
the whole history of humanity

will get no media attention.

Nobody will post
on their Facebook page:

"The world has ended."

♪ ♪

I died in late 2019.

- ...as a human being
of the male sex.

- I died in December, 2057.

- I remember nothing.

- I died as a fruit fly at dusk.

- I have always been dead.

I remember dying
as a cranberry shrub.

- As a nightingale.
- A ginkgo biloba.

- A cloud in July.

- An early cherry blossom
frozen by a late April snow.

- As a snail.

- I was us.

- I was us.

[♪ Yesterday's Fire
by Moonface ♪]

♪♪ The way we played
The Fall♪

♪ And broke your plates
against the wall♪

♪ As the sun rose♪

♪ Then we fell asleep
in the glass♪

♪ And then I had to go♪♪

Closed Captions:MELS