Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Babis Makridis's Pity (2018), which is receiving an exclusive global online premiere on Mubi, is showing from January 11 – February 9, 2019 as a Special Discovery.The bone-dry humor and flat affect that characterize the informal movement known as the “Greek Weird Wave” finds—somehow—even bleaker expression in Babis Makridis’s Pity, in which a nameless father and lawyer (Yannis Drakopoulos) becomes addicted to unhappiness while mourning his comatose wife. Equipped with the stilted language of Efythmis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos’s co-writer for practically every one of his films prior to this year’s The Favourite, Pity is a deceptively low-key entry into a national arthouse cinema distinguished by the work of Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari. Makridis’s second feature film is not a sweeping work so much as one with a fixed target: Pity intimately navigates the state of...
- 1/11/2019
- MUBI
By Peter BelsitoThis Greek film tells a compelling and odd story.While his wife lies in a seemingly permanent coma, an attorney comes to depend on the kindness of strangers in a dark comedy written by director Babis Makridis and ‘The Lobster’ scribe Efthymis Filippou.
Even when he’s sobbing — which he does frequently — the unnamed lead character in this beach side, sunny, pitch-black comedy has a mechanical quality, unemotional.
He is gentle with his unconscious bed ridden wife — is she dying? — we never know.
His wife has been hospitalized since an accident, her prospects of recovery from a coma looking increasingly dim.
His routine is strange. He wears his pain routinely, mechanically with the same proud precision as his crisp lawyer suits.
His constant sadness can feel like a form of bullying, manipulating others to fill the awkward silence with gestures of sympathy. Very important to him are the...
Even when he’s sobbing — which he does frequently — the unnamed lead character in this beach side, sunny, pitch-black comedy has a mechanical quality, unemotional.
He is gentle with his unconscious bed ridden wife — is she dying? — we never know.
His wife has been hospitalized since an accident, her prospects of recovery from a coma looking increasingly dim.
His routine is strange. He wears his pain routinely, mechanically with the same proud precision as his crisp lawyer suits.
His constant sadness can feel like a form of bullying, manipulating others to fill the awkward silence with gestures of sympathy. Very important to him are the...
- 2/5/2018
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
“How much pleasure did you take as a kid, Lasher said, in imagining yourself dead?”
“Never mind as a kid,” Grappa said. “I still do it all the time. Whenever I’m upset over something, I imagine all my friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at my bier. They are very, very sorry they weren't nicer to me while I lived. Self-pity is something I've worked very hard to maintain. Why abandon it just because you grow up? Self-pity is something that children are very good at, which must mean it is natural and important. Imagining yourself dead is the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying form of childish self-pity. How sad and remorseful and guilty all those people are, standing by your great bronze coffin. They can't even look each other in the eye because they know that the death of this decent and compassionate man is the result of a conspiracy they all took part in.
“Never mind as a kid,” Grappa said. “I still do it all the time. Whenever I’m upset over something, I imagine all my friends, relatives and colleagues gathered at my bier. They are very, very sorry they weren't nicer to me while I lived. Self-pity is something I've worked very hard to maintain. Why abandon it just because you grow up? Self-pity is something that children are very good at, which must mean it is natural and important. Imagining yourself dead is the cheapest, sleaziest, most satisfying form of childish self-pity. How sad and remorseful and guilty all those people are, standing by your great bronze coffin. They can't even look each other in the eye because they know that the death of this decent and compassionate man is the result of a conspiracy they all took part in.
- 2/2/2018
- MUBI
Greek director Babis Makridis premiered his debut feature L at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. He returned to the festival this year for his follow-up, the dark comedy Pity co-written by the co-writer of Yorgos Lanthimos’s films. The film stars Yannis Drakopoulos as a self-absorbed sad-sack addicted to the pity of others. Pity was shot by Konstantinos Koukoulios, here making his debut as a Dp of features. Koukoulios spoke with Filmmaker about the influence of Edward Hopper on the movie, lighting a forest at night and his primary aesthetic goal: to make a film about sadness that doesn’t look sad. Filmmaker: How and why did […]...
- 1/30/2018
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Pain is not only painful; it’s repetitious. At least that’s the case in director Babis Makridis’ “Pity,” a slow-burn drama about the relentless heartache loss tends to cause. In the beginning, we find Giannis (Yannis Drakopoulos) standing inside his home, in front of the door. He’s in a white button-up shirt and horn-rimmed glasses. There’s a knock at the door. A woman enters. She has a homemade Bundt cake. In “Pity,” there is an endless supply of these luscious pastries. It’s one of the few bright spots in Giannis’ otherwise morbid existence. The film trudges through the trenches of his wife’s...
- 1/20/2018
- by Sam Fragoso
- The Wrap
While “Greek Weird Wave” might not be the exact right nomenclature for the collection of pitch black comedies that continue to spill forth from the very talented filmmakers of the Mediterranean country, it’s hard to shake one simple fact: some of this stuff really is weird. But delightfully so! The next great entry into the sub-genre is set for a Sundance debut, when director Babis Makridis (“L”) and co-writer Efthimis Filippou (“Dogtooth,” “The Lobster”) premiere their latest work of wacky self-loathing: “Pity.”
The story is simple, following a nameless everyman, played by comedian Yannis Drakopoulos, who revels in unhappiness, lives for being sad, and relishes being, well, pitied. His life is made all the better — worse? — when his wife falls into a coma, a terrible situation that comes complete with plenty of sadness and whole heaps of pity. It’s kind of ideal. But can it possibly last?
Read...
The story is simple, following a nameless everyman, played by comedian Yannis Drakopoulos, who revels in unhappiness, lives for being sad, and relishes being, well, pitied. His life is made all the better — worse? — when his wife falls into a coma, a terrible situation that comes complete with plenty of sadness and whole heaps of pity. It’s kind of ideal. But can it possibly last?
Read...
- 1/10/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
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