It is as if a question was asked and then a film was made to answer that question. And what is that question?
How can a man who feels happy only when he is unhappy be happy?
Released in 2018, the film Oiktos is the story of addiction to pain. I will briefly tell you about the film and try to write about what it made me feel and the emergence of oiktos.
In April 2023, I was looking at the new arrivals on Mubi and I saw it; Oiktos…
I liked the name of Oiktos (Pity) (Zavallı) and the subject of the film intrigued me and I decided to watch it. The Bilge before watching it and the Bilge after watching it were no longer the same person. I had so many questions, I thought so much that I didn’t realise that I had found myself when I couldn’t come to myself for a long time.
Does one get pleasure from suffering? Which situation starts to give pleasure by alleviating the pain.
“No, it’s not their fault that people have stopped feeling sorry for me. It’s not their fault they’re bored or distracted by something more tragic. It is my fault.”
Oiktos is a Greek and Polish co-production film written by Babis Makridis and Efthymis Filippou and directed by Makridis. You may have heard of the Greek Weird Wave. For those who have not heard of it, I would like to summarise it briefly.
The Greek New Wave, also known as the Greek Weird Wave, is a postmodern film movement that emerged in Greece in 2008 as a result of the political problems and the economic crisis. The Greek Weird Wave, which presents identity crises and rebellion against authority in a unique style, is attracting increasing interest day by day. Oiktos, the pathetic pleasure of strangeness, is one of the valuable films of this movement.
Oiktos (Pity) is the story of a man, whose name we do not learn throughout the film, who works as a lawyer. Our character, who is married and has a son, has a normal life, but suddenly his wife has a traffic accident and is in a coma. Our character has no hope that his wife will live.
What comforts us when something happens to us or to those closest to us? Isn’t it the presence of other loved ones? Yes, while our character copes with this pain with the support of his neighbour, his colleagues, his secretary, his dry cleaner, in short, everyone, he starts to feel great pleasure from this. The attention he receives because of his pain causes him to hold on tightly to his pain. The desire to be seen, the desire to exist emerges as a result of the approach of other people in the new process. This time, our character takes refuge in dreams, imagines the situation he is in to be even more severe, and wishes for what he imagines to come true. But this situation does not satisfy him, he wants to shape his destiny. The people who are always with him feel uncomfortable and strange when they see that he is satisfied with this situation. The things that the Lawyer desires suddenly start to take a completely different turn.
And then what happens?
The Lawyer‘s wife comes out of coma. The life of the Lawyer, who rehearses crying in his room, returns to normal. But because he is extremely uncomfortable with this situation, he is looking for ways to be pitied and takes on a strange state. What does the strange man who seeks happiness in unhappiness do to be happy? He kills his wife and father. There is no outside world for him anymore, he has his own gloomy world. We get familiar with this gloom until the end of the film.
Let’s first look at ourselves and then look around us. When we experience very heavy things, when the presence of those who are with us gives us pleasure, does this pleasure satisfy us or disturb us? When I look at myself, I used to feel ashamed when I exhibited my victim sides, but sometimes I couldn’t find the answer to whether this victimhood gave me pleasure. After this film, I questioned myself a lot. Those were the times of elections, so much victim literature was being made, as if this was enough to get into the hearts of the people. The real victims could not show their victimhood anyway. Visualise individuals and groups playing the role of victims. These groups feed on pain to such an extent that their victimhood leads to persecution of those who pity them.
The film ended and I was finished at that moment. At the beginning, I saw how much I felt pity for the Lawyer and how that pity gradually evolved into disgust. Sometimes I was ashamed of the reflection of my pain, sometimes I thanked myself.
I liked the film very much and I highly recommend it to you, dear oiktozians and oiktoz guests.
I wanted to change the name of the site to “oiktoz” by changing one letter of Oiktos and making the “s” a “z”. Why? We will always share the pain of the real sufferers. And we will not submit to the tyranny of this victim. My belief in this will continue as long as I breathe. Maybe the oiktoz universe will expand and this article will reach everyone. I hope that together, with literature and art, we will get rid of being a prisoner of every emotion that deceives us, that exists by using our emotions, and we will exist together!
Stay with art, stay with literature…
TITLE
Release Date: 19 July 2019
Original Name: Pity
Also Known As: Oiktos
Duration: 97min
imdb: 6.7
Genre: Drama
Director: Babis Makridis
Screenwriter: Babis Makridis, Efthymis Filippou
Production: 2018 – Greece, Poland
Producer: Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Amanda Livanou
