The Overview of Pity: Everything You Need to Know
In 2018, Babis Makridis released a Greek black comedy psychological drama film titled Pity (Oiktos) which was co-written by Efthymis Filippou. Makridis’ film is a part of the Greek Weird Wave, and in case you have watched Dogtooth or The Lobster, you will indeed recognize the film’s aesthetic as emotionally sterile, bleak, darkly humorous yet philosophical.
Emotional dependency, societal performance and a grotesque need for validation through a single lens of a man who draws meaning solely from being pitiful at the center of Pity is the deep explorative narrative layered with eerie deadpan absurdity.
Sympathy Addiction: Plot Summary
The story’s featured character is an unnamed middle-aged lawyer played by Yannis Drakopoulos, and he, ‘who is, by all external measures’ living a life described as orderly.’ The man’s ‘dismal’ nighmarish fairly depicts his house filled with flowers from coffee shop attendants, nurses, scribblers, supermarket workers and even the clerks, but his wife, a comatosed woman, lingers as the stale cherry on top of a man’s proverbial lemonade’.But the moment his wife suddenly regains consciousness and completely recuperates, there is no sympathy left. Abruptly the flowers stop, and people cease to whisper condolences. The pity and emotional attention that he had become reliant on vanishes.
In contrast to relief, what he experiences is a spiraling feeling. He becomes increasingly irritable and disturbed, trying to generate sorrow—crying at work, sensationalizing tragedies, even in shocking ways creating false grief. Over time his actions become increasingly more radical, more uncomfortable, and more morally depraved.
No redemption or catharsis is offered by the film. It simply stares into the core of a man that becomes a victim of his well orchestrated life, and will do everything possible to not let him escape.
Cast & Characters
Yannis Drakopoulos as The Lawyer – A cold emotionless stunning performance. Drakopoulos believes a man who doesn’t warm up with emotion but is filled with zeal for emotional connection through compassion is devoid of kindness.
Evi Saoulidou as The Wife – Her astonishing recovery marks the pinnacle of the plot, but serves as a reminder of the hero’s fundamentally desolate existence.
Makis Papadimitriou and Georgia Mavragani as supporting characters in the film’s stark and surreal social environment.
As with the rest of the Greek Weird Wave films, the characters remain expressionless, robotic, and devoid of emotion. This choice intentionally disregards realism for the sake of emphasizing the absurdity of existence.
Themes and Pity: Analysis
Pity is one film that strays from the tried and true. It is deeply unsettling, cold, and comically blunt but deeply contains insightful satire.
🧠 Addiction to Victimhood
The conclusion of this film’s plot might be mildly disturbing to some: is it possible for someone to become so addicted to sadness, they need suffering to truly feel alive?
Motivation for this character does not stem from healing, connection, or redemption. Rather, it stems from pity, from which he wrongly assumes emotional closeness.
👁 Performing Emotion in a Performative Society
The lawyer does not cry in private. He cries where viewers can observe him. He performs grief with the express purpose of receiving emotional value in exchange. This film poses the following disturbing queries:
Do we sympathize with people due to personal concern or because society preconditions us to?
At what point does sympathy become a spectacle?
🔄 Repetition and Emotional Stagnation
The bulk of Pity is made up of repetitive activities including brushing one’s teeth, jogging, attending the hospital, or crying on command. This monotony mimics the vacuum that is the protagonist’s emotional world. He does not heal; rather, he rehearses grief until it becomes ritual.
⚰ The Mendacity of Psychopathy
The film does not represent psychopathy in an overtly flamboyant or violent manner. Rather, it shows evil as mundanely bureaucratic and orderly. His spiral is gradual, rational—almost procedural.
A Cinematic Style: Greek Weird Wave at Its Best (or Strangest)
Babis Makridis presents Pity with a clinical gaze,and an aesthetic of minimal absurdism. Each frame is meticulously composed to showcase eerie symmetry. The cold color palette along with flat lighting results in the camera focusing on blank expressions and slow silences for uncomfortably long periods of time.
If you expect dramatic songs, powerful speeches, clear character developments, or meaningful arcs—Pity is the anti-cinematic. It instead offers an symphony of nothingness, devoid of expression where the only audible sound is muted, and filled with the remnants of the spirit.
The film’s unique and emotionless delivery adds to the uncomfortable humor. Instead of deriving laughter from punch lines, satire stems from the absurdity of action presented in a matter-of-fact way with no commentary.
Critical Reception: Respected but Divisive
While Pity is well received by critics and garnered a few award nominations, it is worth noting that the film is clearly not made for the mainstream audience.
📊 Ratings:
Rotten Tomatoes: 75% approval
Metacritic: 77/100 – indicating generally favorable reviews
📝 What Critics Said:
RogerEbert.com praised it as ‘bleakly funny and hauntingly tragic,” noting that it “plays like a parable about the emotional bankruptcy of modern humanity.’
Cinemacy praised the duality of the film by calling it “hilarious and horrifying all at once.”
SLUG Magazine highlighted the lead performance as “wrenching” and “eerily precise.”
Some viewers were put off by the emotional emptiness and slow pacing of the film, but some others found it to be precisely the point.
Final Thoughts: Should You Watch Pity?
Pity is not an easy film. It doesn’t want to entertain you or engage with you. Instead, it wants to unsettle you. It turns what should evoke sadness into a concept of power, attention, and emotional exploitation.
YES, if you appreciate:
✔ The films of Yorgos Lanthimos (e.g. Dogtooth, The Killing of a Sacred Deer)
✔ Experimental cinema with dark and bleak humor
✔ Unconventionally told stories that have a psychological angle to them
✔ Films that leave you discomforted in the most meaningful ways
NO, if you prefer:
❌ Character driven narratives with some degree of warmth
❌ Drama or storytelling that has a genre-centric straightforward approach
❌ Optimistic resolutions, morality wrapped neatly, or happy endings
Bottom Line
Pity is social behavior’s best calculated psychological horror. It is a harrowing story of emotional manipulation, contemporary disconnection, and the scant gap that exists between sorrow and sociopathy. Stark, strange, and distinctively Greek, it follows the tradition of films that reduce humanity to its most primal actions and challenge us to laugh at the hollowness that lies beneath.